Oh Love, what are you?

Valentine's day was just a day last year, this year it was more of a season. Maybe the talk of love, cards and excessive candy has always been around weeks before the 14th and I've been too wrapped up in day to day stuff that I had never noticed. A few thoughts on love that caught my ear or eye this season:


The first two acts of This American Life
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=374

"I don't know if you're the only one for me, but I think you have to be at least 1 in 100,000"

The first time I heard this it was from an old doctor's wife that liked to travel. I was a senior in high school and she told me, "Hunny, you can find someone anywhere you go."

"The story of struggle of pain, fighting through and over coming- the story of how you stayed together."

Ok- so really, this is hard to understand because it's taken so much out of context. What I liked about it was that it was a story about two people who had to "work" at love after their being in love bliss faded. I was "touched" by the fact that the couple stuck it out. Naturally, I just think, if you have to work at it, what's the point? If it's not going to work easily, I don't want to deal with it. That's a pretty bad attitude, huh? This couple gave me hope, that love isn't perfect or always glamorous .

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The Mess of Love

We've made a great mess of love
Since we made an ideal of it.

The moment I swear to love a woman,a certain woman, all my life
That moment I begin to hate her.

The moment I even say to a woman: " I love you!"--
My love dies down considerably.

The moment love is an understood thing between us, we are sure of it,
It's a cold egg, it isn't love anymore.

Love is like a flower, it must flower and fade'
If it doesn't fade, it's not a flower,
It's either an artificial rag blossom, or an immortelle, for the cemetery.

The moment the mind interferes with love, or the will fixes on it,
Or the personality assumes it as an attribute, or the ego takes possession of it,
It is not love any more, it's just a mess.
And we've made a great mess of love, mind-perverted, ego-perverted love.
--D.H. Lawerence, English 1885-1930

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But finally,

"He who would know the secret of both worlds will find that the secret of them both is Love." -Attar