sazuna45 asks: What is your definition of love?
Hi sazuna45 –
Your question is so simple, yet it’s been asked and answered for milennia. If you look up famous quotes about Love, you’ll see thousands of great thoughts. Some of the best, I think, come from:
Rumi: “This is Love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.”
St. Paul: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”l
Joni Mitchell: “Love is touching souls”
Now I’ll never be as eloquent as they are (hey, being a dog who knows the word “eloquent” is an achievement in itself!), but I’ll do my best to give you my answer. Love is everything that draws any things together. At their most simple, physical levels, Magnetism is Love. And Gravity is Love. At a higher level of consciousness, Love is what pulls cockroaches to mate with each other, and what pulls fleas to bite me (yes, they just love my blood, but don’t get the idea I love them back; I hate those little beasties!). As for me, I love most things, because I’m curious and fascinated and very very sentimental, as you know! I love all the smells there are, I love strangers, I love my pack members and my website, I love coolness and warmth and cozy beds and wide beaches… and as you know, I’m rapturously in love with Handsome!
When it then gets to humans, and your complex brains, Love gets far more interesting and difficult. But deep down, it’s still the same. Love is what pulls you to ice cream, to family reunions, and to someone you barely know but you can’t stop looking at them and wishing they’d look back at you! Love is what keeps people together when they’ve been driving each other nuts, and it’s what makes it hurt so much when you lose someone.
Love doesn’t make sense. It’s not practical or intelligent. It’s greater and more powerful than those things. People (and dogs) have died for Love. And of course, Love often results in someone being born too! Many say God is Love. And who am I, a lovesick mutt, to disagree with that!
I’ll throw two more great quotes at you. One is from a famous Swedish movie called “The Seventh Seal.” “Love is as contagious as a cold. It eats away at your strength, morale… If everything is imperfect in this world, Love is perfect in its imperfection!”
And then this one, from an Australian cartoonist named Michael Leunig, kind of agrees with what I was saying, but in a poetic way:
There are only two feelings, Love and fear:
There are only two languages, Love and fear:
There are only two activities, Love and fear:
There are only two motives, two procedures,
two frameworks, two results, Love and fear,
Love and fear.
But I’ll end with one other one, sazuna45. Because these quotes talk about what Love is, but not what it feels like. And in the end, Love is fundamentally something we feel. As a dog, I think this describes it better than anyone else ever has. It’s a song, so if you like, you could even find it online and listen to it. It’s a very simple piece by John Lennon, called (of course), “Love.”
Love is real, real is love
Love is feeling, feeling love
Love is wanting to be loved
Love is touch, touch is love
Love is reaching, reaching love
Love is asking to be loved
Love is you
You and me
Love is knowing
We can be
Love is free, free is love
Love is living, living love
Love is needing to be loved
All my love,
Shirelle