If a person were to write history based on a single principle, the one ring to rule them all applied to the stream of man, love would be as good as any. It has been written about, represented in painting and sculpture, crooned in rhythm, laid out in iambic pentameter, fussed over, defined, argued about, it has caused fist fights, operas, books, plays, movies. Nothing is more sacred, nothing more elusive. A google search for “what is love?” produces 885,000 results in 0.57 seconds. But, it probably can’t be defined through an internet search.
The ancient Greeks called it the madness of the gods. That is probably as close as words can come, bearing in mind the ancient Greek tendency to blame the gods for so many things. It is madness, though, a joyous madness.
Who can’t remember the euphoria of young love? I am over 60 and I still remember the pain and the joy, the doubt and the relief, all of the conflicts, all of the glorious agony of those terrible, lovely days. But, I have always been a fool for a love song.
As we age love takes on a more comfortable demeanor. You get to skip that terrible crashing from ecstatic heights to despondent, desperate lows. “Going down, next stop crushing misery. Please leave your self-esteem with the attendant.” No, in the days of happily married adulthood you get excited over new socks, finding a couple of dollars in your coat pocket.
“Hey, look, I found five dollars.”
“That’s my jacket.”
“Damnit”
There is still room for sudden mood swings. But, love gets you through.
There seems to be no concrete definition, nothing you can examine and use to gauge when the pleasure of someone’s company is caused by love, and when it is just friendship. But, you know it when you feel it. It hits hard, fast, and without warning. Barreling in out of the rising sun, Wagner playing through the loudspeakers and leaving you breathless, helpless, and happy.
And, as the years wear on, and the excitement is a distant memory you have the comfort of knowing that person has seen you at your worst.
My wife has changed the bandages on my stitches, nursed me back from deaths throes of pneumonia. She has listened to the slights, and injustices that chased me through the day.
She has heard me moan, whine and complain about the terrible mistreatment suffered during an average workday. I am so grateful for that small bit of madness of the gods.
Joseph Conrad wrote “we live as we dream—alone.” I suppose there is a lot of truth in those simple words and that powerful sentence. To me, though two people who love each other are really just one person, who happen to inhabit two vehicles. The same thoughts run through their heads, the same things make them smile. They make each other smile. And there is no more powerful force in the world than the smile of a person in love.
By now it has become clear I don’t have a clue what love really means. And, nobody ever accused me of being particularly bright, but somehow it seems that if we all spent a little more time trying to find a way the love the differences in each other the world would be a much nicer place, and I would love that.
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