Love, eh?

1973

There is no clearer example of poets and scientists doing things differently than when they speak of love.  Remember John Lennon's inspired four minutes of  'All You Need is Love'?  Then, if you have an hour, read the Wikipedia article on love. It is tempting to prefer one rendering over the other, but life isn't that simple. If we are of two minds, there must be a reason, and we need all of our faculties to stay out of trouble and do our best. 

To be sure, there is a natural bias that changes with age. I can remember, can't you, how irrational was love at age 18: just let me gaze at my beloved. Then suddenly, you are 80 and love is a habit you awake to every morning. Explain it if you can. 

Explain it as three elixirs (attraction, attachment, commitment)  mixed in various proportions under control of hormones and neurotransmitters, the recipe changing as you pass through life's stages. Good to know. It may help if things get difficult, and they do get difficult. 

In the middle years when there is much to be done, you can't waste time refining your understanding and adjusting your motives, except maybe for an hour on Sunday. You just get the job done, learn from getting it wrong, and repent at leisure: forgive me, world; I didn't know what I was doing. But as I recall, even then, there were regular flashes of insight, and we got through without doing too much damage.

Now I am thinking that leisure is wasted on the elderly, we who are ready to write what we have learned. When we search for what to say, once again, as at the beginning, the inner poet finds one word to evoke the meaning written in our bones. One word explains me and you, children and grandchildren, family and friends and strangers becoming family, the light of dawn and midday and dusk, everything. 

Love, eh? 

Yes, love.

2020