What are the things you want more than love?

It’s a song about nobility and personal sacrifice, about doing what’s right, even if your heart is telling you otherwise. The spoken intro gave us the title for our new album: And love is not the easy thing / The only baggage you can bring / Is all that you can’t leave behind. Love, in the highest sense of the word, is the only thing that you can always take with you, in your heart. At some point you are going to have to lose everything else anyway. There’s a passage in Corinthians that uses the image of a house going through a fire, and it seems to suggest that when, in death, we eventually face judgement (or inspection, as one translation puts it) all that is made of straw and wood will be burned away, only the eternal things will survive. For me those things are family and friendship, abstract things, they’re not the things that you make. So at the end of the song, there is a litany of ambitions and achievements. You’ve got to leave it behind / All that you fashion / All that you make / All that you build / All that you break / All that you measure / All that you steal / All this you can leave behind… It is a mantra, really; a bonfire of vanities, and you can throw anything you want on the fire. That’s a really interesting question to ask: what are the things you want more than love? (Bono Vox - In: U2 by U2*, pages 366-367)

Bono’s question is stuck in my head: what do I need more than love? I’ve stopped to thinking of it. It’s hard to find the real answer: family is the basis of my life. I can’t live without my parents and sister. They can’t live without me. Friends, as Bono said, are “abstract things”, which made spend a long time thinking of. I’ve had friend I supposed were to forever, I and unfortunately, they don’t. In other hands,  have friends who had helped me when I never expected… For sure, friendship is something I want more than love, because I believe it IS a king of love. My doubt is: how can I know what friendship is for real or isn’t? After all the suffering feelings my last “best friend forever” had made me feel, I’m never sure who is in fact a friend for heart…

While I still have no answer for this friendship question, what are the other things I need more than love?! What are the other things I need more than love…  There’s just a word that can describe it: believe. I need to believe. I need to believe that all my dreams come true. I need to believe in love. I need to believe that I’ll be set on the fire and I’ll pass through it. I need to believe that everything, in the end, it’s gonna be alright. I need to believe all the sacrifices I did, I’m doing and I’ll do in the future are for a good reason. I need to believe God is by my side whatever I do, wherever I go. Life is not easy, however, If I believe I won’t give up while I’m crossing the hard times that are coming.

Family, friends and believe. These are the things I need more than love. And you?! What can you tell me about this singular question?!
__________________
*U2 by U2 is a book that tells us all the trajectory of this Irish band. It was created from more than 150 hours of interviews with Bono Vox, The Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr. and Paul McGuinness (manager). The questions are by Neil McCornick, Daily Telegraph rock critic.

Click here to read a Portuguese version of this text.

Mysterious ways...

To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal. 

If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel 

(U2)

Looking for...

I still haven't found what I'm looking for...

Breathe

The roar that lies on the other side of silence
The forest fire that is fear so deny it

Walk out into the street
Sing your heart out
The people we meet
Will not be drowned out
There's nothing you have that I need
I can breathe
Breathe now
Yeah, yeah

We are people borne of sound
The songs are in our eyes
Gonna wear them like a crown

Walk out, into the sunburst street
Sing your heart out, sing my heart out
I've found grace inside a sound
I found grace, it's all that I found
And I can breathe
Breathe now

[Breathe - written by U2]

_____________

This is the way I feel the world now...

2010: "Roll the dice"

Roll the dice
(By Charles Bukowski)



If you’re going to try, go all the way.
Otherwise, don’t even start.

If you’re going to try, go all the way.
This could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

Go all the way.
It could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
It could mean freezing on a park bench.
It could mean jail,
it could mean derision, mockery, isolation.
Isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your endurance,
of how much you really want to do it.

And you’ll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

If you’re going to try,
Go all the way.
There is no other feeling like that.
You will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with fire.

Do it, do it, do it.
Do it.

All the way
all the way.

You will ride life straight to
perfect laughter, its
the only good fight
there is.

Reading...

Using over 150 hours of interviews with the band, the coffee-table sized U2 BY U2 is a worthy addition to the many official and unofficial sources of information already available. Band members Bono, the Edge, Larry Mullen Jr., and Adam Clayton talk about their early lives, their initial struggles in the music business, and the way they've each coped with their increasing success, in addition to sharing often deeply personal stories about relationships within the band and with their loved ones. Insight is also provided into U2's songwriting and recording processes, and the recording of such worldwide best-sellers as RATTLE AND HUM, ACHTUNG BABY, and ZOOROPA, while lavish color photographs from the band's own archives tell their own story of U2's rise to fame.