Whitney Houston's Love Lesson

I will have to admit that I was lured into the clutches of the conditioning box today. While preparing for work I needed to get an item that I had left in my mother’s bathroom. When I got to her side of the house I saw that she was watching intently the Oprah show. I jokingly threw out to her “What movie star is she rubbing elbows with today?” She said, “You should see this; she is doing a special with Whitney.” Curiosity got the best of me because I wondered what had happened to her. I thought that she was a remarkable talent that got trapped in the glitz, glitter and fame that traps so may unwitting performers. I was hoping to hear a comeback story that was believable and one that didn’t reek of put up, knowing that a fall was eminent in the near future.

Well it is not over but I got more than what I was hoping for. The first thing that I got is something that I can’t talk about here because it deserves its own thread and to go into it now will take the thread in way too many directions when I want the focus to be on what I think is the most important point of this thread.

I want to discuss why we think that love means that you have to give up yourself to demonstrate the sincerity or the intensity of your love for another?

I want every teenage boy and girl to hear her story. I want every teenage boy and every teenage girl to hear that you can not make another person happy nor is another person responsible for your happiness and the frantic hunt and chase to achieve that goal is a sure path to disaster and death and sometimes not just of the love.

People go into relationship often knowing exactly what they are getting into but think that by some magical power they are going to change it and make it what they want instead of what it is.

It will never happen. When a relationship starts to go sour because one of the parties feel less than and inadequate, they will always put the other in a death hold and try to get them to drown with them.

Rarely does the one that feels they are drowning reach out to the one that they are supposed to love and ask for the other to pull them out. Maybe it is ego, maybe it is guilt, I don’t know why this is the action of choice but it often is.

This hits home for me because you hear more and more about teenagers with the boon of the internet making suicide packs and about men losing their jobs and coming home to murder suicides of whole families.

This goes beyond madness and it is not a sign of the times.

It is sign of too much media influence regarding what is expected from a love relationship and how the media often romances death.

Love is supposed to be indefinable and in many ways it is. I can’t tell you what it definitely but I can tell you what it definitely is not.

I think that Whitney's honest and willingness to share some of her most personal and intimate moments with the world should not be in vain.

Maybe some of us will learn something from her experiences and her pain.

Yeah let's all listen to a crack addict for enlightenment!

Thanks Oprah!

I am not saying that anyone should listen to her for enlightenment.

I am saying she is just one example of how misconceptions about love and love relationships can create disaster.

Why is she a good example?

Because if the rich and famous are not immune then it is easier for us to see how we can be lured into that trap as well.

We can learn vicariously. We don't always have to put our hand on the stove to tell that it is hot.

I'm sure a crack addict has more wisdom in him than an ignorant and inarticulate conservative.

two lines

Wisdom is a gift that shines above intelligence and there is nothing common about common sense.

I am not asking people to accept Whitney as the poster child of enlightenment.

I want them to realize that if someone with that much money, clot and fame can fall, there is no shame in us making bad choices that destroy our lives as well.

I think that this can be a weapon that we can use to protect our children and to show us what love and relationships really are about.