Are you camp “Old Fashioned” or “Fifty Shades of Grey”? This valentine we reflect on why we chose or love or hurt the one we are with. Pain is inevitable in love but not pain in self-depreciating shades. We forgive the edges in well-deployed words and actions that rip into old wounds, choosing to return to wild, breathless passion. Love can be traumatic, so trust has to be implicit.
Trust that beneath the flares, your love is still wild about you. Which is why I am firmly in camp Old-Fashioned. The movie reminds us that love is patient, because we all fall flat on our faces. As the trailer says, “Love is about a girl and a boy looking for something more.” Is something more – bondage, whips, handcuffs and games? Who needs sexual fantasies about hurting and disrespecting each other? Love is not always pretty – that’s life but we are basically old-fashioned and frayed along the edges. Our hearts need safe place, a home – picket fence and all.
Trust is a phenomenal aphrodisiac. Romance is worth its weight in red rose bouquets and it takes a good girl or boy to blow your mind. (Thanks Jessie J.) This day, I choose love – old-fashioned, familiar but wild.
“The Wild Rose” by Wendell Berry
Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,
Suddenly you flare in my sight
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,
and once again I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.
Ama Danesi 
Very well said, Glory. It’s all about perspective. Thanks!
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The image inset cracked me up, witty Veronica. Fifty shades of grey… hmmm… I don’t know if all this publicity won’t be counter productive in the end, curiosity gets the better of most people you know. But then, it’s good we point out evil and let people choose, at least when they see the movie or read the book, let them do so with some initial reservations.
#teamoldfashionedmbok
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