LOVE
Even those who like to write shy away from essays on or definitions of love. The word is used all the time but if any word probably has an individualized meaning, love must be that word. To start with Love is a feeling and feelings are hard to define. Also, feelings by definition are distinct from reality. I may feel safe someplace but that doesn't mean I necessarily really am. Of course we 'love' our parents, our friends, our pets, maybe our job, our community, our country, our God, our neighbors, and the list goes on. Lotta lovin' goin on. Really? Well, maybe at least to some degree some of the time. Maybe there are degrees of love. Maybe sometimes to love someone simply means you don't hate them. And perhaps sometimes we use the word love more as some sort of obligatory appropriate social habit, like we don't eat spaghetti with our fingers due to social expectations.
I'll start here with 'true love'. Even if I get through that, does this mean any other kind of love is 'untrue'? Damn, am getting tangled up here already. When 'true love' occurs I guess marriage then follows. Well, I guess sometimes not if your 'true love' is already married, or you are gay, or there is a religious barrier, social barrier, etc. Practically speaking most people really don't marry their 'true love'. If we could, most of us would marry the most beautiful/handsome person we have ever met who had the most perfect wonderful and charming personality. The problem is, most of us can't compete in either category. So, in adolescence we begin the tortuous process of finding where in the suitability order for marriage we fit in. Most everybody is not in the Superior group. Or even the Quality group. Maybe the Above Average group. Most likely in the Average group. But many are in the Somewhat Below Average group. Too many are in the Grungy group, and the least lucky are in the Ghastly group. Like it or not---for most people---the quest for 'true love' is really amongst the group to which they belong. There are occasional exceptions, but not that many. 'True love' gets reduced to the best you can get from your genetically and environmentally assigned group. To me, that kind of takes the edge off the meaning of 'true love'. It ends up being some sort of "well, that's the best I can do". Then to top it off, a marriage ceremony is held and in some form or fashion the clergy will say "what God has put together, let no man put asunder". " A hah! God stuck me in my group pool of possible mates. Why didn't he put me in the Superior Group? Did I sin before birth? And of course if God puts married people together, why are there so many divorces? What kind of judgement does God have anyway? Why do we always create an image of God which is petty, irrational, and absurd? Not to mention mean-spirited.
Be all this as it may, does 'true love' ever last? I doubt love is ever a constant thing. It changes with time. Of course it does, just about everything changes with time. Half of marriages result in divorce and I wouldn't hazard any guess as to what percentages of marriages last till death do us part ONLY BECAUSE neither one wants to risk losing what they know they have, and not sure of what they might get, if anything, were they to divorce. I doubt most age ripened spouses find it difficult to get down the grocery isle for want of those chasing after their body and personality in search of 'true love'. Just sit in an airport some time and count the number of people who go by with whom you would want to have sex. Doubt it will be a high percentage. But of course, 'true love' may have nothing to do with sex. You see weddings sometimes in which one or the other is a grotesque mismatch. And if it is, money or power is probably the basis for the marriage. I don't think that qualifies as 'true love'. Maybe, if logic is the basis for approval, civilizations like the Arawak Indians are the most realistic. In their society (now extinct) marriage was nonexistent. Both males and females hooked up and split up as the situation changed, with no anger, hostility, or difficult divorces. Some sort of musical chairs, and when the love was gone (the music stopped) they switched partners. Am I endorsing this? In matters of love only a fool would jump to endorse anything. The dating game, for many people, is difficult enough without it being an ongoing life challenge ("Honey, I found my 35th 'true love' in the elevator late last night. See you!" In the end true love remains a mystery: "The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment...Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up" (James Baldwin).
"Love thy neighbor as thyself". I guess it is a nice goal, but hardly achievable. Those who learn to appreciate diversity are most likely to achieve the most progress toward this goal. Appreciating diversity is intimately tied to love. Far right religious groups are not exactly radiating with Love. Love is extremely difficult to assess. When someone says "I love you" or "I love him/her" or "I love this or that" how the hell do you really know to what extent they mean that. Some people, myself included, don't go around verbally expressing the word love like a shotgun. Matter of fact, I feel uncomfortable saying I love anyone, since I feel like, "What the hell am I saying?" Love is a matter of degrees, so if I have loved someone the most in my life, how can it mean the same thing to say I love someone else? To be correct one would have to say, "I love you somewhat" since you don't love them as much as you loved the person you loved the most in your life. There are 'huggers' in life and there are 'non huggers' in life. Which ones are filled with the most 'love' of others? Beats me. Hugging in some schools became quite fashionable, a replacement for saying hello. Sounds good, everyone hugging in the hallways between classes---except not so good for those no one wanted to hug. I know who those would have been back when I was in high school. I am not sure how much I support blatant and frequent identification of those least lovable in our society----especially young kids. Maybe we should throw out the term 'love your neighbor' and replace it with appreciation of diversity, tolerance, respect, understanding, and cooperativeness. I think I can appreciate diversity without having to love everyone.
The worse abuse of the word love is those who go around expressing 'love' for their country by waving flags, pledging allegiance, and wearing patriotic lapel buttons while singing the national anthem at every event imaginable. Real allegiance to one's country is summed up by James Baldwin: "I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually". A lot of Baldwin's thoughts relate tangentially to patriotism. "Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law...... I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.......It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have....Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch....People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead....It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be....For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out". True patriotism uses the Golden Rule upon which to judge public policies. True patriotism is wanting your country to be the one to most closely follow the Golden Rule, which is the basis for all ethics.
People rush to 'love' a lot of things. Like they may say they love football. Because you enjoy watching or participating in something it is love? I don't think it fits. Enjoyment and love are not the same thing. One is frivolous and one is monumentally intrinsic to our well being. Can one be content without love? I really don't think so. Love is really an experience---and such experiences are the basis for contentment. Past love is never really gone from your psyche. Experiences of love, in the broadest sense, become the emotional drive which enables one to cope with the present, to judge yourself and your own behaviors, to understand others, to have empathy, to be tolerant, to be cooperative. That is, after all, what love teaches us, and we are forever grateful to those who helped teach us so much through their gift of love to us---a love at various levels, but love nevertheless. Of all the creations of God's evolutionary process, love may be the most exalted and wondrous.
