Love and hate
“Love and Hate” – Michael Kiwanuka
How much more are we supposed to tolerate?
Can’t you see there’s more to me than my mistakes
Sometimes I get this feeling – makes me hesitate
My iTunes library tells me I added Michael Kiwanuka’s album Love and Hate in March of 2017. I know it was the title song that got me hooked – though I think I like “Cold Little Heart” better. I was probably listening to it for a few months before I bought the album. At that time, I was working my way through my various definitions and understandings of love (still am but in different ways). I had dated someone for a few months in the summer and fall of 2016. I can remember our first date, or at least most of it. It had that magical quality of soft bright sunlight that summer evenings have. We broke up several times, but would always get back together (sometimes the same day). We really enjoyed hanging out and it felt like we really got each other: things we both needed at the time. The problem was that for us, there was no in-between. We were either laughing our asses off or someone was crying. The push-pull nature of our relationship convinced me that wild swings while falling in love were normal (maybe even healthy). I’m pretty sure I was listening to Kiwanuka’s “Love and Hate” then and also the song “Unaware” by Allen Stone. Those lyrics include lines like: “You say that you care / I was unaware” and “All you do is push, pull, tear / we can’t stretch any further / push, pull, tear.”
Aside from screwing up the rhyme scheme, how might Kiwanuka’s song feel if instead of hate he used the word grief? I’m contemplating this because I recently came across a slightly different take on grief than what we usually assume it to be. Perhaps grief is a more encompassing feeling than what I had previously thought. Discussions of grief usually center around loss, and in particular death. But what if we zoom out a bit and allow for a broader view of loss? Is it appropriate to classify disappointment or giving up as a type of grief? Is it grief we feel when we realize that someone else (or our self) may not be capable of anything better? Are we grieving when we acknowledge, “this is the best they can do, and man, I was hoping for more….” In that moment, our vision of a future self or future other dies. At some point in almost every child’s life, they come to the realization that their parents are not the superheroes they once thought they were. In that realization, there is a loss of innocence and a type of grief on both sides. That relationship can no longer be what it once was. Can love exist without the risk and inevitability of grief?
I was talking with my brother this past week. At some point in our conversation, we talked about our father. My brother and my dad haven’t spoken to each other in four or five years. I was trying to tell my brother that I’m discovering that life gets a little more bearable if we can let go of, or soften, our expectations. If I get along with my father, it’s because in certain areas, I’ve stopped expecting so much from him and in some cases, I’ve set boundaries that allow me to tell him when he’s being unkind or thoughtless. I’ve also realized that as a parent, he’s had to suffer (grieve) our disappointments countless times: when we didn’t get good grades or make varsity or get into that elite university. Though I didn’t use the word grief, I was trying to convince my brother to accept that most people are doing the best they can (with the tools they were given) and that expecting more than that often leads to disappointment and resentment. If grief leads to a type of acceptance, if it is the true continuation of or corollary to love, I’m not sure it can survive in the cathedral of our resentments.