My first encounter with the word ‘love’ came, I think, in 1967 when, as a smallish boy I saw and heard The Beatles performing All You Need Is Love. I may have been more impressed at John Lennon’s ability to chew gum and sing at the same time than understand what the song was about, but nonetheless it stuck. As soon as the opening notes, stolen from La Marseillaise, are played and the band sing “Love, Love Love … ” I am in another world. “Love is all you need”, right?
In recent times, I have found myself thinking about the word love and I have been telling people how much I love them. Not just my partner, whom I tell I love several times each day, but also friends, both male and female. Like is not always enough.
There are more than enough definitions for the word. A quick trip to Cyber Space with my old friend Mr Google suggests that love is:
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A strong feeling of affectionLove can be a strong feeling of affection for someone based on kinship, personal ties, admiration, or common interests.
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A feeling of closenessLove can be a strong feeling of closeness and care for someone, whether or not they are in a romantic relationship.
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A practiceLove can be a practice that involves enacting loving values and standards, such as empathy, respect, vulnerability, and honesty.
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A virtueLove can be considered a virtue that represents human kindness, compassion, and affection.
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A viceLove can also be considered a vice that represents human moral flaws such as vanity, selfishness, and egotism.
The first four I understand, the fifth, ‘A vice’, less so, a philosophical argument that is well beyond my level of understanding.
I don’t doubt that there is science behind the meaning of love, the release of brain chemicals and hormones, for example, but please don’t ask me to explain it all. For what it’s worth, I see love as part of my very being. It’s just that until relatively recently in my life I rarely used it to anyone beyond my immediate family.
I was not brought up in an environment where people used the word frequently, if at all. Of course, I was aware my mum loved me and that I loved her, but I think we took it as read and rarely said it. My grandparents never used the word love, my dad with whom I had a distant relationship (particularly in terms of geography – he lived in Canada, I in Bristol, England) hardly said “I love you” at all at least not until the latter stages of his life when the broken pieces of our lives started to come together. Likely because of my upbringing, love was something you just didn’t talk about. It was something you just did.
As the years have gone by, seemingly these days at breakneck speed, my subconscious has come to realise that actually I do love more people than I thought I did. I always defined love as going to bed with your best friend and in terms of my relationship with my life partner, that holds true. But it’s much more than that. I look around the room and the way I feel about people is much more than “let’s go and have a pint” or “let’s go to the football”. It’s all the things in the lists I shared above, without the vice, that is.
And that love for others hasn’t just turned up today. It’s always been there. It’s just that I’ve just been afraid to say it. No more. More than this, I don’t just feel the love, I want to tell the people I love that I love them.
I don’t pretend to understand how all of this stuff works and why someone holds a special place in my heart than someone else. It’s not just about good and bad people. Those chemicals and hormones move in mysterious ways.
Of all people, it is the words of the late Queen Elizabeth II with which I close this blog. I have found that I did not always realise just how much I loved someone until they died. That whatever I felt was much more than just liking them. It was deeper than that. The Queen said this: “Grief is the price we pay for love.” With that in mind, I am going to tell the people I love that I love them in the here and now and if outsiders have an issue with that, well I don’t care.
