Love

This word – love – is used nowadays somewhat indiscriminately to express general pleasure (I “loved” the movie); to express a desire (I’d “love” a cup of coffee); to also indicate sexual pleasure (they made “love”); to indicate a favourite (I  just “love” that painting) and there are many other associations with the word “love” that are in my Thesaurus.

Possibly we lack the vocabulary to express exactly what we mean.

To me, however, the word means a great deal more than a quick throw away expression. To me the word “love” has a deeper meaning that encompasses companionship, trust, empathy, compassion, kindness, understanding, justice, mutual respect and an instinctive “knowledge” that humanity is part of something that is, possibly, beyond our powers of understanding. Something wonderful.

We are, and all living things, are linked, and no matter anyone’s religious ideology or beliefs, we are all linked in many unexpected ways. As an example we humans share half our genes with the banana. And of course it is well known that we share about 98% of our genes with chimpanzees.

Now I am not asking anyone to “love” a chimpanzee but in a deeper more Platonic way we should love all things. This was wonderfully, if poetically, expressed in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, wherein he wrote the famous lines:

            “He prayeth well, who loveth well

            Both man and bird and beast.

            He prayeth best, who loveth best

            All things both great and small;

            For the dear God who loveth us,

            He made and loveth all.”

To me this is what the word Love means – something that is both personal and yet all encompassing. It was my privilege and my joy to have loved a woman and to have been loved by her for over thirty-six years. This will be with me always.

23/08/2016. I'm adding a short piece by the American - Max Ehrmann. A piece called "Love some one", which is very appropriate:-

"Love some one - in God's name love some one - for this is the bread of the inner life, without which a part of you will starve and die; and though you feel you must be stern, even hard, in your life of affairs, make for yourself at least a little corner, somewhere in the great world, where you may unbosom and be kind."