May 31, 2009

• Love
  

  We English speakers have this word, love, that has so many different meanings it's reduced to something akin to a bowl of overcooked oatmeal.
  Because
  words and their meanings are so malleable I find myself less willing to
  use them indiscriminately. The dictionary doesn't agree with me. Señor
  Diccionario says that love is an intense feeling of deep affection. If
  you are of a more carnal bend Señor Diccionario offers this lusty
  alternative: a deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone. Perhaps
  it's understandable as Spanish is one of the romance languages.
  ATTENTION: If you're the sentimental or romantic type you may wish to
  leave now without reading further. You have been duly admonished. In my
  experience the sentimental or romantic types have an extremely thin
  membrane between two small bodies of liquid emotion, their love and
  their hate. This membrane is easily punctured by the least little pin
  prick. Once the membrane is breached the two liquids come together to
  form a third substance that is more corrosive and dangerous than either
  of the ingredients apart. If we continue our intercourse with Señor
  Diccionario he tells us that affection is a gentle feeling of fondness
  or liking but allows that it may also be a physical expression of these
  feelings. If we remove the physical aspects associated with love it is
  reduced to more of an idea than a feeling. Most people initially
  confuse sensations with feelings. What would love be if you didn't have
  a physical body?

  I don’t know what love is. I know the ancient Greeks had three words
  for love. Many other languages have more than one word for love.
  English used to have different words for the pronoun, you, much as
  Spanish still has. Thou, at one time, was the singular subjective case.
  The forms you and ye were once reserved for plural uses. Today, thou,
  thee, thy and thine are either religious or archaic. Perhaps the word
  love suffered the same kind of fate. When we’re children we love ice
  cream and we love Mom. As we mature our perception of love expands and
  contracts at the same time. Because it expands we find that we must use
  the word differently or modify it with other words. There are love
  beads, love apples, love children, love feasts, love handles, love-ins,
  love affairs, love bites and love interests. You can have a love match,
  love nest, love seat and a love life. There are love birds, lovers and
  lovesickness. So many ways to modify the word love and we still don’t
  know what it means. The people for whom we may feel pity are those who
  know what love is. Once we’ve found something we usually stop looking
  for it. I don’t mean looking for someone who will love us the way we
  think we want to be loved. We’re not talking about looking for love in
  all the wrong places.

  It’s a matter of keeping an open mind about love. That’s difficult
  because we know that love hurts and we don’t like to hurt. We protect
  ourselves from being hurt when we can. We protect parts that have been
  wounded in the past. Who hasn’t been wounded while trying to learn what
  love is, what it means, how it may be manifested in life without all
  the pain, the wounds and the upsets? It takes a courageous soul to keep
  looking, keep expanding, keep trying. I confess to not being very
  courageous in this area for much of my life. As it draws to a close
  however, I find myself again willing to suffer for a greater
  understanding of the idea of love and whatever may lie behind it.
  Perhaps I’ll be able to risk a little more today than I could
  yesterday. Perhaps as age creeps up from behind some parts of our
  protective memory will thin or be diminished in some way, freeing us to
  dig deeper, see more and expand our idea of what love, real love might
  be. Have a lovely day.
  

  • 8:35 pm
  • 7 Comments