That's why to love means to learn the art of nourishing our happiness. Thich Nhat Hanh, How to Love Mindful Essentials Short Love Poems Plant each hour a thought of love for those who have hurt you, destroy the idea that anyone can take away your happiness. Love begets love, so remember this law of sowing and reaping, for the more love you give, the more will be returned to you.
Cliffe, Lessons in Living Hurt But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. Introverts can feel loved and secured even when they are alone most of the time. Eric Christian, Introvert Encouraging Nowadays, meditation has become a broad term that is associated with relaxation, relieving stress, building internal energy, and deepening inner peace, love, compassion, forgiveness, generosity, and patience.
Laura Boyle, Confidence Relax The problem is that the thought of being virtuous or dutiful out of a love of virtue or duty doesn't readily stoke the twenty-first-century ethical imagination. But the thought of being awesome out of a love of awesomeness does. Nick Riggle, On Being Awesome Imagination Tell a family member that you love them and see what happens to the relationship. You'd be surprised how many people take these words for granted and rarely tell those closest to them how they really feel.
David Khalil, Principle 7: The Power of Giving Appreciation Poems To define something, Love for example, is a huge subject and is like describing the awesome beauty of a diamond, how can you? Yet if you break it down to describing each facet, you will have a greater feel for what you are describing.
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Mitchell Freeway, Romantic Poems for Valentine's Day Feeling Make no mistake God understands the hardships of loving someone who does not love back, and He knows the pain of abuse and rejection firsthand - yet still He comes for us. Brian Hardin, Reframe God Never forget why you fell in love in the first place and never stop giving your love. Sometimes praying together will help you stay together and stay stronger.
If you have this love, cherish it forever and never take it for granted. Khary Tolliver, This beautiful love Giving Has love changed over the last years? I read a lot of romance these days - research! The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy. Heinlein Health It is quite easy for me Martin Luther King Jr to think of a God of love mainly because I grew up in a family where love was central and where lovely relationships were ever present.
Family When we love deeply, we mourn deeply; extraordinary grief is an expression of extraordinary love. Grief and love mirror each other; one is not possible without the other. In suffocatingly close relationships, by the way, one gives up important parts of one's self in order to be loyal to the other s. Although Marx supplemented his theory of class and power with a theory of alienation, there is great disparity in his development of the two theories.
The bulk of his commentary on alienation takes place in his early work. Even there, as in later works, the formulation of theory of alienation is brief and casual. It is easy to understand why Marx's followers have also made it secondary to material interests. It seems to me that any analysis of social structure and process should contain both axes: Perhaps these are the two major dimensions of any society.
In this paper, I emphasize solidarity and alienation, even though I acknowledge the importance of power. The threefold continuum of social integration suggests a way of analyzing the individual-relationship balance in song lyrics: In this article I have reported stable patterns of popular romance songs.
Samples during the last thirty years suggest alienation in the isolated mode, rather than solidarity. The samples were similar during the period , but more songs during that period suggest solidarity, and suggest it more vividly. My analysis so far has suggested that types of romance songs and the proportion of each type have been fairly stable over the past seventy years, with only very slight changes in proportions.
These findings need qualification and elaboration, however. First, my analysis to this point has concerned only lyrics. Beginning in the 's, massive changes in musical forms took place, which are much greater than the changes in the lyrics that I have reported. The typical romance song of the was a ballad.
The musical form of the ballad is slow, somewhat detached in tone, with fairly simple orchestration as accompaniment. Beginning in the 's, however, the various forms of rock and roll appeared. The tempo and strong emphasis on rhythm increased so greatly as to suggest urgency, even desperation. The effect of this change is most noticeable in infatuation songs.
A comparison illustrates the change. They suggest emotion, but emotion that is under control. There is balance between thinking and feeling. The balance has shifted to the point that feeling dominates thinking. In the later period, the music is increasingly dominant. Songs became longer, but with more repetitions of lines, decreasing the weight of the lines. Musical form and orchestration became more complex, but the lyrics are simplified. These changes, like the increasing tempo and strong rhythm, increase emphasis on feeling. The mode of delivery by singers of romance songs also changed in this direction.
The sixties saw the beginning of artists who yelled or screamed, like Aretha Franklin, rather than singing in a form resembling speech. James Brown is not a screamer, but his cries of delight are non-verbal, dominating usually somewhat insubstantial lyrics. All of these changes taken together are in the direction of emphasizing feelings over talking and thinking.
Even lyrics themselves have changed over the seventy year period more significantly than is suggested by the small changes and fluctuations shown in the word counts and lyric analysis reported above. Among romance songs, there are now many more genres than there were in the earlier period, all of which I have classified as other in my analysis. There are now romance songs about quarrels and disputes; some of these songs involve three persons.
Typically, a woman is complaining about the competition for a man by another woman. A whole new genre is the overt proposition, many of them floridly sexual. Although there were sexual songs in the earlier period, sex was seldom mentioned explicitly. In terms of my analysis, perhaps the most significant change has been the loosening and overlapping of the three types of romance songs.
The heartbreak lyrics have the least loosening, love next, and infatuation, the most. There are still many clearly identifiable representatives of each type in the most recent periods, but others show fewer indicators, especially love and infatuation. Another change is a tendency toward overlap between the types.
Love lyrics that have some of the characteristics of heartbreak or infatuation, for example. Here is an example of a love lyric that has considerable overlap with heartbreak "How Do I Live": The singer's attraction is reciprocated, but he or she anticipates heartbreak. A love lyric from the thirties stands in stark contrast; rather than anticipating pain, it anticipates pleasure: It is a stirring tribute to the loved one, without idealizing her or him, and without being self-absorbed.
In the thirties and forties, there were a few romance lyrics that implied solidarity rather than alienation. I have not been able to find any comparable lyrics for the last forty years. There are exceptional lyrics during this period, but they deviate only very weakly from the patterns of the four discriminating features. There are even less lyrics that do not show any of the discriminating features in the later period: Moreover, the vividness of the images that make lyrics suggestive of solidarity, accentuates the difference between the two periods.
Most of the exceptions in the earlier period are vivid, most of those in the later period are rather narrow or vague. This study has shown that over the last seventy years, most romance lyrics involve patterns that feature individual desire rather than love relationships. A theory of social integration suggests that such lyrics imply alienation rather than solidarity. In this framework, solidarity involves a secure bond, a relationship featuring a degree of attunement between the lovers, and expansion of vision that includes the larger world beyond the immediate relationship.
Most romance lyrics, on the other hand involve only one side of the relationship, the lovers, their pain, impairment, and constriction of vision. The finding of fewer instances of lyrics that imply a mutual love relationship in the last forty years than in suggests that alienation is increasing in romance lyrics.
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To what extent does this change in romance lyrics correspond to changes in actual relationships in our society? The fact that these patterns have been relatively stable over many years may mean only that the songs that contain them have market appeal. It doesn't guarantee correspondence with social reality Frith, It is conceivable that the patterns I have described are merely songwriting conventions.
We cannot assume that mass appeal of heartbreak, infatuation, and love forms means that the audience is recognizing their own relationships in them. For example, the slight tendency in recent years to combine elements from the three genres, noted above, may be market driven. If a song can appeal to two of the three genres as a crossover, it could increase the size of the group that recognizes the form of the lyric, and therefore its market appeal.
I believe that market forces explain the formation of these lyric genres, but only in part. One market consideration likely to have considerable effect on the changes found in this study cannot be ignored: The majority of the consumers in the earlier period were probably adults, but the majority in the later period were undoubtedly youths. This change might explain some of the simplification of romance lyrics reported here.
Flagrant images of infatuation and heartbreak are more dramatic and easier for a ten-year-old to understand than mutuality, and idea not easily understood in Western societies, even by adults. The theory of social integration outlined above provides an unexpected insight into the structure of romance songs.
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The narrowing of vision to the point of obsessing only about the beloved in the majority of romance lyrics suggests a dynamic frequently found in Western societies. The isolated person yearns for union — engulfment — with the other s , the dynamic that seems to drive adherence to sects, cults, religions and nations. In romance songs, the isolated lover, yearning for the beloved not yet attained, or lost, voices this desire.
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This yearning is part of a cruel trap, because it seems to suggest movement and growth, but may result only in a new form of alienation. The most telling evidence of increasing alienation in this study is not found in the word counts and in the sampling of lyrics. The systematic techniques I used for this purpose giving, at best, only partial renderings of the contextual meaning of lyrics. The evidence that seems difficult to discount is that the lyrics that strongly imply security and solidarity in romantic bonds all come from the period The indications of attunement, widening of vision, and enhancement of life are virtually absent in the sixties and after.
Most of the romance lyrics since then imply lack of attunement, constriction of vision, or impairment of function — images of solipsistic self-absorption. The acceptance of such forms as romantic by songwriters, scholars, and the mass public hints at widespread alienation in our society. These findings only add a further indication, like the increasing divorce and crime rates, and the decreasing rates of connectedness, that can be plausibly interpreted to suggest increasing alienation. Robert Samuels called this book to my attention.
For a wide variety of approaches, see: For a descriptive study of romance songs as stages of courtship, see: The count of titles for each year after is far greater than The lists for include titles on the Top 40 for even a single week during the year, which can lead to as many as two hundred and sixty one titles for each year. The years deal only with the Top 10 for each week, so that the total for these two decades is less than a hundred songs per year.
The years chosen at random were 28 , 41 , 34 , , , and Stolorow and Atwood give exact parity to self and relationship, and Gergen and MacNamee come close to doing so. These two books look toward a relational psychology, and therefore to integration between psychology and the social sciences. Lyrics which involved curtailment of feeling were rare before , but plentiful ever since. This change will be the topic of a future article. There are some exceptions, of course.
Two supplementary studies of charted romance lyrics in less modernized societies suggest that they have more and stronger exceptions currently than the U. Erika Moreno found seven exception Spanish language lyrics in the charts of Spain and Costa Rica in alone. One of these was strongly exceptional, involving four concrete characteristics of the beloved. Frank Ha has found that charted Korean heartbreak lyrics tend to emphasize the beloved's pain more than the lovers, suggesting alienation in the engulfed mode, rather than the isolation of Western romance lyrics.
The scholarly literature on love in the West is particularly surprising in this respect. The conception of love expressed there is every bit as individualistic as popular romance songs. But this subject is too broad to be covered here, since there is a vast literature, both classic and modern, on the meaning of love. This literature will be the topic of a future article. Popular music in the lives of adolescents. Crane, Diana , The sociology of culture. Durkheim, Emile , Suicide.
A study in sociology. Translated from the French by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson; edited with an introduction by George Simpson. Elias, Norbert , What is sociology? Elias, Norbert , The society of individuals. Edwards, Emily , "Does love really stink? The mean world of love and sex in popular music of the s. Fiske, John , Reading the popular.
Frith, Simon , Performing rites. Ha, Frank , Personal correspondence , Horton, Donald , "The dialogue of courtship in popular songs. American Journal of Sociology , , Lyrics World , retrieved from the Internet, , at: Persons, Ethel Dreams of love and fateful encounters. Scheff, Thomas , Emotions, the social bond, and human reality. Cambridge University Press, Stolorow, Robert, and George Atwood , Contexts of being. The intersubjective foundations of psychological life. Stern, Daniel , The first relationship. Harvard University Press, Tennov, Dorothy , Love and limerance.
Since modern Western societies focus on individuals rather than relationships, we would expect individualist, rather than relational patterns in U. The continuum of love. In this article I present some of the results of my research of both the surface and hidden meanings of one such an extra-textual cultural conglomerate, clustering around the idiom of "romance". Romance in popular songs. A sample of lyrics. This classification of romance songs is in close agreement with two earlier surveys.
Love at first sight. A similar idea is expressed in many romance lyrics of more recent periods, often very crudely, as in:. Well she was just seventeen You know what I mean And the way she looked Was way beyond compare So how could I dance with another Oh, when I saw her standing there. The central idea in all love-at-first-sight lyrics is that a single glance is all that is needed; falling in love is instantaneous and based completely only on the appearance of the beloved. Here are some examples:. It [love] surrounds me Over me like a sea of madness It controls me.
Hey, I'm a loaded gun I'm crazy about her, crazy about her Hey, I'm a lovesick son I'm crazy about her. A second theme of many, but not all of romance lyrics is that the beloved is a coming into reality of an idealized image held long before she or he appeared, as in these lyrics:. Dearly beloved, how clearly I see Somewhere in Heaven you were fashioned for me. Long ago and far away, I dreamed a dream one day And now that dream is here beside me — Just one look and then I knew That all I longed for long ago was you.
As we know, ideals are not easily fulfilled. So, summarizing my findings thus far, both "craziness" and a discrepancy between inner feelings and outer reality seem to be common characteristics of the general idiom of romance songs. The classic romance song of obsession, perhaps, is "Night And Day":. Day and night, night and day, why is it so That this longing for you follows wherever I go In the roaring traffic's boom In the silence of my lonely room I think of you. In many romantic songs this obsession is related with other elements of mental impairment, of which compulsion seems to be the most important one.
I try to change my thoughts It's a waste of time You keep my mind occupied. Both of the lines "See that I'm always thinking of you" and "You keep my mind occupied" also introduce one of the most prominent impairments of thought in the infatuation lyrics, compulsive thinking — which is so strong, that:. All day long I think of you I can't even think of things to do. Be sittin' up in my room Back here thinkin' bout you I must confess, I'm a mess for you Be sittin' up in my room. This idea often takes an extreme form, that life is meaningless without the love object, as in:.
I can't live, if living is without you I can't live, I can't give anymore. Obsession can result in several other feelings. In "Addicted To Love", for instance, the lovestruck singer complains about himself:. Your heart beats in double time Another kiss and you'll be mine, a one-track mind You can't be saved Oblivion is all you crave.
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Obsession can even take an extreme form as stalking the love object, as in "Every Breath You Take":. Every breath you take And every move you make Every bond you break Every step you take I'll be watching you. A noteworthy effect of obsession also is a clouding of judgment, as is shown by these lyrics:. This lyric illustrates impairment to the point of living in a self-contained, unreal world. The next song actually is titled "Infatuation":.
Early in the morning, I can't sleep I can't work and I can't eat. You can't sleep, you can't eat There's no doubt you're in deep Your throat is tight, you can't breath Another kiss is all you need. I walk the streets at night Until the morning light Come shining through Can't get a good night's sleep Ain't been to work in weeks — Can't get her off my mind I'm drinking too much wine I'm burning up inside.
The song "Have You Ever" also complains about loss of sleep. It also introduces another impairment, lack of articulate speech:. Have you ever tried the words But they don't come out right. The inability to speak clearly is closely related to the inability to speak to the love-object at all, as in "I've Told Every Little Star":.
Very often infatuation lyrics imply that there has been no contact between the lover and the adored one. One example is "Shake Your Bon-Bon":. I feel a mad connection With your body. The issue of contact and communication is important in understanding romantic love, but requires some theoretical background.
Some times, as the next song fragment shows, even to the point that "love" involves pain and impairment:. This can't be love because I feel so well No sobs, no sorrows, no sighs This can't be love, I get no dizzy spell My head is not in the skies.
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Just as the pain of loss is the defining characteristic of heartbreak lyrics, impairment of mental and, especially, physical functioning is the most prominent characteristic of infatuation lyrics. Seeing the actual person. The idea of little or no contact in infatuation raises the possibility that most of what takes place is in the smitten one's head, not in the real world, and certainly not in the love object.
You're just too good to be true Can't take my eyes off of you You'd be like heaven to touch I wanna hold you so much. It's just like heaven being here with you You're like an angel, too good to be true. I've told every little star Just how sweet I think you are. Infatuation lyrics leave out particulars, as when they assert that the adored is better in some undisclosed way than all others:.
However, in the case of some of the earlier lyrics, the descriptions are more detailed and concrete, and therefore exceptional. These songs focus on the other person, noticing particulars about the loved one that make that person unique:. Moonlight becomes you, it goes your hair You certainly know the right thing to wear Moonlight becomes you, I'm thrilled at the sight. The absence of precise details and the prominence of generalized images tends toward sentimentality or fatuousness.
Here is an example of the latter:. These and quite similar lines are repeated to the point that one may think that the record is broken. Constricted versus expanded view. In this lyric, the lover's view of the world expands to include sounds that he or she hadn't noticed before:. There were bells on a hill But I never heard them ringing No I never heard them at all Till there was you. In the next lyric, the lover's vision expands to include both the world of nature and the human world:.
I see skies of blue and clouds of white The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night — The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky Are also on the faces of people going by I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do They're really saying I love you. What a day this has been What a rare mood I'm in Why, its almost like being in love There's a smile on my face For the whole human race Why, it's almost like being in love.
To summarize the features of infatuation songs: The lyrics of "Can't Let Go", repeat these themes, with an emphasis on compulsion and obsession:. You're all I know, I can't let go Just cast aside, you don't even know I'm alive You just walk on by, don't care to see me cry — I try and try to deny that I need you But still you remain on my mind. It was somewhat of a surprise to find that heartbreak lyrics, like infatuation lyrics, suggest that the heartbroken one is also lost in his or her own bubble.
But I can't go a day without your face Goin' through my mind In fact, not a single minute Passes without you in it Your voice, your touch, memories of your love Are with me all of the times. The torments and pain described in heartbreak songs, are mostly mental. They often reside in the inevitable repetitions of compulsive thinking itself:. I'm lying alone with my head on the phone Thinking of you till it hurts I know you hurt too but what else can we do Tormented and torn apart.
Heartbreak lyrics usually concern the feelings of the heartbroken one alone, not those of the lost one. The accompanying physical element of all the pain and suffering mainly is crying, also in songs written from the male point of view:. Baby, I'm on my knees praying God help me please Bring my baby back, right back to me If lovin you was right then I don't wanna go wrong So I drown myself with tears Sittin' here, singin' another sad love song. Some songs are more distanced and ironic, and as a consequence wittier.
They retain, however, the main theme of compulsion:. Well maybe nothing lasts forever Even when you stay together I don't need forever after But it's your laughter won't let me go So I'm holding on this way. The lyric "Nobody Knows" continues the same themes, but also has the theme that the pain of denial can be added to the pain of heartbreak:. Like a clown I put on a show The pain is real even if nobody knows Now I'm cryin' inside And nobody knows it but me. Exceptions to the rule. The first one seems to be a song of successful mourning:. This ballad is utterly unlike most heartbreak lyrics in that the memories of the lost one evoke strongly positive feelings — "How strange, how sweet, to find [the memory of] you still".
The next lyric is still more unlike the typical heartbreak lyric:. The way you hold your knife The way we danced till three The way you changed my life. In this lyric, written by Ira Gershwin, the lost one is highly particularized. This lyric is somewhat exceptional for the period , since it particularizes the loved one, describing her thoughts and feelings as well as the lover's.
The Beatles' lyric "Something" provides an example:. The cues to the beloved lack concreteness. In my search of the lyrics from to , I could find only one obvious exception to the trend I have described, "The Lady In Red":. The beloved is described in one fairly concrete way, in the style of the exceptional romance lyrics of An intermezzo on individualism.
Like Mead, the psychiatrist Stern has pointed out that infant learning is dependent on what he calls "attunement" between infant and caretaker. A theory of social integration. Of course, there is also another side to the issue of alienation: Furthermore, beginning in the 's, a change in the relative weight of the verbal and non-verbal elements began. Here is an example of a love lyric that has considerable overlap with heartbreak "How Do I Live":.