| | 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.
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| | Posted 5/31/2009 5:35 PM - 80 Views - 0 eProps - 7 comments
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