Everything’s Coming Up Roses, is not only a song that was performed by Ethel Merman, and many others, but for some a great Valentine’s Day song. For me, Valentine’s Day is just another day, 14th February.
In Damn Yankees, the title of one song was You Gotta Have Heart. It was not aimed for the lovelorn, but to give luck to a sad sack baseball team. Hearts and music go together like peanut butter and jelly or mashed potatoes and gravy.
Enough about food. Throughout movies and television, there were many star-crossed lovers. How about the classic book turned into several movies, Shakespeare’s, Romeo and Juliet or a modern-day movie adaptation naming its characters, Tony and Maria in West Side Story.
In fact, last year there was a second version of West Side Story was released to theatres. Everyone had their own particular love song.
In one film version of Romeo and Juliet, there was the song, A Time For Us, while in both of the films, West Side Story it was called, Somewhere. Both lyrics talk about another place and time. In my way of thinking, love is not only for this day, but we are meant to love people each and every day.
In 1989, a small independent movie titled, True Love, was released and hit the theatre screens around the globe. Meanwhile, the song titled, True Love, written and sung by many individuals from Bing Crosby to Pink recorded this title to unique words and lyrics to different amounts of success.
2012 was Pink’s time and she performed True Love and the song was nominated for a 2013 Grammy Award Nomination. Love, sweet, love comes to almost every person uniquely and we are supposed to grab this when the opportunity presents itself. We may not get a second chance.
In most cases, people get one and only one true love. What is true love? It is a strong and lasting affection between spouses or lovers who are in a happy, passionate and satisfying relationship with each other. From 2003 until 2015, my true love was Maureen, who was my significant other.
To be honest, my nickname for her was “Sweetie”. She was my “love sweet love”. Sounds impressive, but once again I hark back to what Maureen always said, “Valentine’s Day is just like any other day and you are supposed to love each other every day.
Unfortunately, on 12th June 2015, she died, my true, love, sweet, love plus my everlasting love died with her. Maybe I will find true love again, but no one knows what my future will bring.
Enough of my pity party. What I do for myself is do my best to focus on one day at a time. Alcoholics Anonymous has many affirmative statements. One of them is the following, “I will be a better me”. Once we figure out what this means for us, don’t let anything stop us from pursuing this. My focus each day is on what is promised and continually striving for success. Me, I tried to accomplish five new experiences daily. What a lofty goal.
Naturally, when my experiences were lower than five, I became upset and disappointed with my daily performance, but I did not give in. After a period of time, I realised that this was unrealistic and changed the situation. My bar was set lower.
Now it was to only try to do one new thing each day. It may not be completely new, but a different course of action was needed to do something, so it is new to me. A slogan from US Army is, “Be all you can be”. Boy, is that true? Knowing one’s limitations definitely is OK and doing what we can achieve, each and every day.
These exact words, Love, (Sweet Love) were finally recorded for the first time as a title in 2021, by the artist My Mix. Many times this phrase was worked into lyrics, but they had not been placed as the song’s title.
In fact, back in 1965, Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote the song, What the World Needs Now Is Love. Applying the phrase, “Love sweet love”, a total of six times has made this a very popular love song all these years later.
Is it something we can possibly utilise now in the troubling times that we are continuously facing? Maybe, love, sweet love is idealistic, but doesn’t it sound great? In my opinion, it is more than great, it’s simply wonderful.
Love is not to be taken lightly. C.S. Lewis wrote, “To love at all is to be vulnerable”, while John Lennon penned, “Everything is clearer when you’re in love”. When love is present, it can change the way we think and or what we feel.
Even if one does not recognise the alterations, they do happen. Yes, I hear all the murmuring. Of course, I am not saying the emotional upheaval is bad, but it does occur.
My role was to say that it is not all about love, but about dealing with each day as it comes without looking back or ahead. Trying to be more realistic works in my book. Positive thinking gets me through tough times. Another popular song goes, Love Is All Around Us, and has been recorded many times.
When will love be out there for me again? It will be when I am ready or not, it will be meant for me, and I will find love again. Hey, it happened once. For now, it is enough to love myself and others in readership land.
Maureen, my sweetie, I love you, I miss you and I still wish you were here.
