Why Can't We Give Love??

 

“Can't we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can't we give love that one more chance?
Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love
Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?

'Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves”

I've heard “Under Pressure” countless times, including several covers and mashups, but recently, this verse caught my attention. Especially the “love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night” and “love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves.” These two statements about love are some of the truest I've heard, but not some of the most frequent.

It reminds me of Doctor Who (Death in Heaven 8.12) The Doctor realizes he's never needed an army, because he says “Love is not an emotion. It is a promise.”

Cybermen delete emotions – like a person who's been so traumatized they've shut their feelings away. Danny Pink wants the inhibitor activated to get rid of his negative feelings, but in Danny's case, even this alien tech inhibitor doesn't fully work because he loves Clara so deeply. When we're open to loving, we're open to feeling, all the feelings, including pain. And as the Doctor says “Pain is a gift. Without the capacity for pain, we can't feel the hurt we inflict.” Empathy. That's what he's talking about there.

So how does this go back to Bowie & Freddie? “Love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night.” In short, love dares us to care for people, but “the people on the edge of the night” is a reminder to care for people outside of our immediate circle, the ones we don't see, the ones often overlooked, the ones purposely marginalized. Again, empathy.

In fact, one of the recent covers I've heard is from The Magicians. During this scene, Julia is working with a fairy, trying to help free a whole collection of fairies who she's just learned have been enslaved. One of her lines during the song is “It's the terror of knowing what this world is about.” These things all go together. Once we know about the problem, we have to be willing to “feel the hurt we inflict” if we want to stop inflicting. We have to be willing to face “the terror of knowing what this world is about”, i.e. the systems and our place in them, if we want to accept that dare to “care for the people on the edge of the night.”

For some people, this comes naturally, and studies have also shown that many people who've experienced childhood traumas have a heightened sense of empathy. But you know what else we often get? A block in applying that empathy to ourselves (current or past selves). It can be hard, once all those negative voices in our lives and in society's expectations gather together in our heads, hard to give ourselves some grace, hard to “change our way of caring about ourselves” but this is what love dares us to do.

So I try to take a moment when my inner voices are being most critical (and let's be real, it's usually later on once I've managed to somewhat quiet them with affirmation from external sources or journaling or even distracting myself with more Doctor Who), and ask myself how I would react to a mistake or situation if it were my daughter, my nephew, my best friend, my wife, even Facebook friends, instead of me. Would I ever judge them the way I allow those inner voices to judge me? No! So I comfort myself, remind myself of positives when appropriate (i.e. if I feel like a lousy writer, remind myself of reviews, comments, publications – NOT toxic positivity type messages), acknowledge my feelings as valid and even why I feel that way if possible, and then start discrediting the inner voices if they're still problematic.

It's a process, but we deserve it! Because again...

Can't we give ourselves one more chance?
Why can't we give love that one more chance?
Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love
Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love?