Love

The numbers of associations that the word "LOVE" has for me is rather large. I am not going to dwell on all these. Rather I'd like to just discuss the power of the word.

Why are people always so ready to declare their love for all things inanimate or not human but always have trouble when it comes to another human being? Is the word so laden with expectations and commitments that the very thought of using it is daunting?

It is also something of an unused word in many subcultures. I think of my own - and others of my stoic Tam-Bram ilk may agree - experiences with the word growing up. I don't believe I ever heard anyone in my family, immediate or otherwise, tell anybody else that they love them. Of course, exposure to American / western culture largely through movies and books made me wonder about that. I can remember times on TV when mothers told their children they loved them that would make me embarrassed. It just seemed too intimate a phrase to use, even with your own children. Of course, today, I tell my kids every chance I get, that I love them.

On the other hand western culture is always endorsing voluble declarations of love, using the "power of love"or encouraging people to "feel the love"etc. etc. so much so that to not use it is weird. The large amount of music that revolves around the theme of love is testimony to the incredible sway of the emotion and all that it does to a human being. The ecstasy, the joy, the gut-wrenching sense of loss when it dies, the miraculous closeness and intimacy that comes with it - all gifts of the all-powerful Love, all subjects of the greatest of human literature, poetry and music.

And what of falling in love? And why is there always a distinction made between being "in" love with someone and just loving them? If I love my children is it wrong for me to be "in love"with them as well?
And what of romantic love? Why is there a time period that one must allow to pass before one can safely acknowledge the existence of this emotion? Is it because people feel that the word is too readily bandied about so if one must use it it must be used sparingly?

I object to that notion. Love, while it has powerful effects, can be easy.
Someone told me the other day that if one day she told her boyfriend she loved him and they broke up some time later, it would mean that she had somehow let herself down; for how could it end if it had really been love!?
My reaction to that is that it's all bollocks. Who said that Love has a time frame? When you feel it, you feel it. And that's all there is to it. These archaic notions that Love has to last forever is exactly that; archaic and outdated. Obsolete.

Having said that, I suppose the romantic ideal is to have a love that lasts forever. But with life being as fast paced as it is and every man and woman with so much access to so many more, only enhanced by technology, finding and sticking with your one true love is becoming more and more implausible.

Closely tied in with this is the concept of fidelity. In days gone by, with fewer women at work and in the public eye, it was easier for women safely tied up at home to stay sexually faithful. This way the men fooled around and still retained their women, who looked the other way because they needed the financial security only a husband could provide. It is my theory that with more women entering the work force that sexual promiscuity went on the rise and more relationships began to fall apart.

I feel like digressing here into the evolution of the working woman, the freedom she earned to make different choices, and the subsequent change in the power balance at work, home and in societies in general. However, I will save that for another post, and for now get back to the subject on hand.

So now that there is a power balance, and women had as much say as men in who they sleep with etc., the power of the word became stronger too. For after all if it is the woman who is responsible for mate selection and the continuity of the species, it is imperative that men in relationships ensure that they earn the Love of the woman, retain it, and therefore the power that goes with it - i.e. continuation of his lineage through her.

Or at least that is how it should be. However, given all the many ways we humans have messed up and complicated reproduction (contraceptives, abortions, sex selection, female foeticide and infanticide, IVF, etc etc), the concept of mate selection and its evolved counterpart Love, have suffered.

Nothing is simple anymore. If you select a mate, you have a checklist against which you tick off all your requirements. If after that they fail on a few or you add on a few more, things start to become hard, and then it falls apart. And once it falls apart, there are no dearth of other options to fill the void. So the object of your love changes. And you move on. I suppose this frequent changing of partners makes it harder to to feel that old flame of Love. It becomes harder to trust and have faith and imagine that a future may exist with so-and-so. No, everything is in the here and now, and Love has no part in it.

He tells her: "I love how you smile. I love how you are so independent. I love your eyes. I love how good you are with kids, I love how you think. I love your food. I love this that and the other about you..."and she says similar things back to him. And that's where it stays. Where is the "you"or "me"in all this? There is no more an "I love you"as simple as that would make everything. For to say I love you would be to say - I am here with you through thick and thin; I am yours; You are mine: let's walk on forward together, hand in hand, and face the world and all its challenges together.

No one wants to offer anyone love of self anymore. So much has the word Love been imbued with the power of promise.

And so we all grow jaded. Because really, more than anything else, all each of us wants is to be loved and to give love in return. Period.