Gone

I am really excited about this photograph. Lately, I have been listening to a lot of Gnarls Barkley (much to the chagrin of many of my friends [you'll get over it]) and one of the songs, "Gone Daddy Gone", inspired me and gave me the idea for this photo. (Edit: It has been pointed out to me on a couple of occasions that "Gone Daddy Gone" is actually a Violent Femmes song and Gnarls Barkley covered it.) You can read the full lyrics here, but the most fitting part would probably be this section:

"Beautiful girl, lovely dress,
Where she is now I can only guess.

Cuz its gone daddy gone,
The love is gone.
[repeat 3x]
Cuz its gone daddy gone,
The love is gone away."

A friend of mine, being the good friend that he is, pointed out that there must be something in my life that made me want to take this sad picture. Besides the song, there is. A lot of my friends are in love related situations right now. Some are in budding relationships, some are enduring the pains of love, some are ending their relationships, some are holding out, hoping someone will feel as strongly about them as they do about that someone. There is, as always, joy and pain from love all around.

Anyway, my friend wanted to make sure I was ok; that I wasn't experiencing too much heartbreak now. And I'm not. I don't have time for such things at the moment, plus, Life is beautiful. But we got talking about breakups and heartbreak and how hard and terrible they are. But I think they are an important part of love. They make clear two of the aspects I find to be most important: you have a choice and you are suseptible.

If you didn't have a choice to commit to someone, what would be the point? If it was something you had to do, like breathing, it wouldn't be very special. Imagine if someone promised to breath for you. That wouldn't seem very special because, well, they have to. And so, you can choose not to act on your love for someone and it can really break their heart. But without that choice, it wouldn't be as special anyway.

Getting into a serious relationship makes you suseptible. Its a beautiful thing to trust someone else with your feelings like that: to trust them to be honest with you about the way that they feel, to be responsible and strong enough to be open with you and to trust you in the same. Its a big responsibility. And it can lead to a lot of pain. The fact that it can lead to such heartbreak is because it has so much power to be beautiful as well.

All that being said, I think a healthy relationship should obviously not have difficulties due to dishonesty, a lack of trust, or a lack of communication because both people hopefully understand those fundamentals that I just described.

Well, I know a couple of you are very much opposed to such cheesiness, but I wanted to share with you my inspiration for this photo.

In the words of my high school religion teacher: "Be good to each other."