All You Need is Love July 5, 2011
Posted by Matt in love.Tags: beauty, love, meaning of life
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The oft-repeated proverb from those great 20th century prophets, The Beatles, that “All you need is love,” never seemed quite so poignant and real as it did to me yesterday.
After a great weekend with my family in Arkansas, I said goodbye to everyone, including our kids, and began the two hour journey from small town Arkansas back to our home in the outskirts of Memphis. After stopping for gas, I made one last swing through the town of my youth before heading back to the concrete and traffic of life in the city, and that was when I saw them. The elderly couple sat in a pair of lawn chairs in the monstrous shade of a large oak tree, holding hands and watching life speed by on Center Street and, though I knew them from my past life in this town, I smiled and continued driving. But, as the car moved on, I found it hard to continue accelerating down the road, for there was nagging pull somewhere in subconscious telling me to visit with the old man and woman, and when I reached the railroad crossing, where I was greeted by a lowering crossing arm and the blaring whistle of a coming train, I knew that I could spare a few minutes. So, I did an abrupt u-turn and sped back to their house.
As I parked and began to walk over to them, I could see a friendly, but quizzical look on her face and, as I greeted her, she asked me, “Who are you again?”
I explained to her that years ago I had gone to church with them and had visited with them quite a bit before we moved away more than seven years ago, and though she nodded, I could tell that the clouds of age had pushed aside any true remembrance of me. I shook their hands and told them a little about our family before saying goodbye and leaving them to again sit beneath the shade, feeling the uncharacteristically cool gentle breeze of July in Arkansas, in their small bit of Edenic paradise.
I turned on some music and began the trek across the Natural State and as I drove along, gazing out at the lovely, green flatlands of eastern Arkansas, punctuated by fields of corn and soybeans and cotton, at the old black men in their straw hats holding their can poles over unnamed creeks along the roadside, and thought about the simple beauty of it all, of love in all its splendor. Yes, this is what it’s all about.
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