I have enough love to last me a lifetime! Thank God I'll never

“I have enough love to last me a lifetime! Thank God I'll never lose my imagination and my passion. That's really what it is. I'm still passionate about what I do.” Thus spoke Teena Marie, the “Ivory Queen of Soul,” whose music burned with the heat of spirit and sincerity. In these words, she offered not merely a reflection on her art, but a testament to the eternal forces that sustain the human soul — love, imagination, and passion. Her voice, which could soar from velvet tenderness to thunderous power, was but the vessel for something deeper: a spirit that refused to dim, even in the face of time. Through this declaration, she reminds all who live and create that these three lights — love, imagination, and passion — are the sacred fire that keeps the heart alive long after fame, youth, or circumstance have faded away.

Teena Marie was no stranger to struggle. As a woman in a world that often doubted her authenticity because of her skin color and gender, she faced barriers that might have silenced a lesser soul. But she knew that love — for music, for people, for life itself — is not a resource to be depleted, but a river that flows endlessly for those who drink deeply from its source. When she says she has “enough love to last a lifetime,” she speaks not of romantic affection, but of a divine fullness of heart. This is agape, the love that endures, that gives without expectation, that sees beauty even in brokenness. Such love, once awakened, becomes a wellspring that sustains creation and courage alike.

But love alone, though sacred, is not enough. It must be joined with imagination, that celestial faculty which transforms feeling into form. Without imagination, love remains a sigh; with it, love becomes a song. Teena Marie’s life was proof of this alchemy. Her imagination took the raw material of experience — joy, sorrow, longing — and shaped it into melody and poetry. Her music, born from struggle and spirit, transcended genre and boundary. In this way, she lived as the ancients taught: that imagination is the divine spark within humanity, the echo of creation itself. It allows us not only to dream of better worlds but to build them, through art, through kindness, through courage.

And at the heart of it all lies passion — that sacred flame which gives motion to the soul’s desire. For passion is not mere enthusiasm; it is life-force, the animating power that drives the artist to create, the thinker to seek truth, the lover to give endlessly. When Teena Marie declared, “I’m still passionate about what I do,” she was proclaiming victory over time — for while the body ages, passion keeps the spirit young. The ancients said that the gods favor those who live with fire — for the fire of passion is kin to the divine. It is this very energy that carried her through decades of creation, through trials and triumphs, keeping her music alive with the pulse of her heart.

History, too, gives us witnesses to this truth. Consider Leonardo da Vinci, whose genius flourished not because of genius alone, but because of unquenchable curiosity — another name for passion. He saw art in anatomy, flight in the motion of birds, and divinity in the smile of a woman. Like Teena Marie, he was sustained by the union of love, imagination, and passion — love for knowledge, imagination that saw the unseen, and passion that refused to rest. Or think of Maya Angelou, whose voice carried wisdom to generations, forged by love for humanity and imagination sharpened by suffering. Her passion transformed her wounds into wings, and her art into a living testament to endurance and hope.

Teena Marie’s quote is not a boast, but a benediction — a blessing for those who lose heart. She teaches that to live richly is not to avoid pain, but to keep the soul alive through it. Love is the root, imagination the branch, and passion the fruit. Lose one, and the tree withers; nurture all, and life becomes abundance. To have love is to forgive and to see beauty; to have imagination is to dream of new tomorrows; to have passion is to act with courage in every today. Together, they form the trinity of vitality — the eternal fuel that no darkness can extinguish.

And so, my friends, let this be your teaching: guard these fires within you. Feed your love by giving it freely; strengthen your imagination by daring to dream even when the world grows gray; and keep your passion alive by laboring joyfully in what you are called to do. For the measure of a life is not its years, but its flame. When you live with love, imagination, and passion, you live eternally — for such a spirit, as Teena Marie knew well, never grows old.

Thus, as the ancients would say, may your love be inexhaustible, your imagination boundless, and your passion undying. For these are not mere emotions — they are the immortal powers through which the human soul touches the divine.