I love little baby ducks, old pick-up trucks, slow-moving trains, and rain . . . Just kidding. None of those things are on my list of favorites. For those who don't know, that list came from an old Tom T. Hall song.
I really do love my mother, my children, my grandchildren, my friends, and an assortment of men. When I nail down the exact feelings I have for each of them, I realize just how strange love is. Love that is appropriate in one relationship can be totally inappropriate in another.
To confuse the matter even more, I also love asparagus, passion, my freedom, DeeDee's courage, when my characters take over my writing, Adolfo's hands, laughing until I cry, sad songs, the sun, emotion, general anesthesia, Paula's infectious giggle, the first time a man says he loves me with his eyes, wooden roller coasters, and old houses. I love being alone, and I love being in a crowd. I love remembering, and I love forgetting.
I love watching my daughters love. Between them, they have covered a stuffed rabbit and a floppy mouse pajama bag, Rod Stewart and Dean Martin, Timon and Paul Newman, Bolivia and New York, boyfriends, a husband, many pets, and three children. I love anything that brings pleasure to the people I love.
Sometimes, I feel strong sentiment for strangers. Loving emotion the way I do, I am easily drawn into the love when I see tears in airports, those shed in happiness and sorrow, or strangers kissing or holding hands in public. I love these people for the moments of their happiness they share with me.
Other words - appreciate, enjoy, desire - describe the emotions behind the attachment for each thing I have listed, but love also applies. I am certain that twitch in the heart I feel when I see a baby, a puppy, a perfect flower, or a rainbow qualifies as love on some level.
A television screen delivered Paul Bryan via Ben Gazarra, the first man I wanted to marry. Not for a second did I believe the character was real, or that I would ever meet him, much less marry him, but I loved the created persona and the emotions he evoked. In 1972, I fell in love with Captain Brandon Birmingham, a fictional character in Kathleen Woodiwiss' novel, The Flame and the Flower. I had trouble exorcising my love for him years later when, from a more experienced or advanced perspective, I decided he was a rapist.
Through natural progression, I now love Internet characters. My heart goes out to Lorraine when she enters a fun thread and throws her angry, misguided temper tantrums, just as it did when the run-away staying in my home acted out if she thought I showed my daughter more attention than I did her. I want to hug Senator Slowly's love child each time I see her standing to the side, arms folded in defiance, dealing stories to get in the game. I love Martinchill for championing my causes, What Nonsense for validating my suspicions, and Johnny 5000 for making me smile every time his innocent icon contradicts the wisdom, humor, or satire it accompanies.
It won't matter to me if I discover that Lorraine is truly the shut-in down the street who hasn't spoken to anyone in five years, or that Martin is my cousin and What Nonsense a telephone solicitor stealing company time to help me out. I don't care if Johnny is an inmate at a women's correctional facility in New Mexico, the Senator's love child is a class project in Minneapolis or an old man in Tennessee. I love the characters and my interactions with them. The smiles and the entertainment are real and their creators talented. None of them ask me to believe in anything other than the characters they deliver, or promise anything outside my computer. They are a collection of Charlie Browns, Captain Birminghams, and Ben Gazarras - art to appreciate and love.
Love n 1: strong affection 2: warm attachment 3: attraction based on sexual desire 4: a beloved person 5: unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for others 6: a score of zero in tennis
Love vb 1: cherish 2: to feel a passion, devotion, or tenderness for 3: caress 4: to take pleasure in
Love comes from all directions and in countless packages, often where I least expect it. I am grateful for the ability to recognize and enjoy love everywhere I look.
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Comments: 98
Anyway, I love this article! I am a person who loves much. My husband always says to me, "You can't love a thing. You can only love people". I know he is wrong. I love many things! I love jumbo fried shrimp, I love the movie "Steel Magnolias". I love autumn, and kicking through the dried up leaves. And I too love my internet friends. Hell, I love the internet. I cannot imagine my life without it. And as you said, it can all be artifical, but it doesn't matter.
So perhaps what you love is not important, it is simply the fact that you love.
I love you Sandy!
Wait. what? I meant to say...
You ain't gettin my beer!
That reminds me of Love, Actually- did you see it? If you haven't, you should- it fits right into what you're talking about...
Happy Unbirthday and best regards,
He then went on to say that LOVE is the only answer. He said "More and more, I know that it is only love which will ever save the world.......if it is permitted to do so. Love, and the active desire to express it....the seeking out of others we may not understand. Nothing else is right."
I agreed with him. So, Sandy... there is never too much of love. Let it begin within each of us. Let it ripple out to everyone on Earth.
Good LOVIN stuff.
And a valentine to Gather friends.
I love you too, Sandy.
We love in spite of ourselves and in spite of any reason given to withhold the gift, the way weeds cannot be stopped from sprouting through the pavement.
Beautiful, Sandy.
Thanks to all who have responded. I do love interacting with everyone, and truly appreciate those of you I have come to know and love more personally behind the scenes.
but I think of songs, I'd go with,
God didn't make little green apples and it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime
"I love little baby ducks . . ." My son learned that song when he was a child and he still sings it to his little girl.
The opposite of love is not hate (another strong passion), but apathy.
"It doesn't matter who you love, or how you love, but that you love."
I love following along behind your excursions through Gather.
(are you just saying that so I'll add a paragraph about you?)
You got that right Sandy, great way to look at it! Okay, so you piss me off from time to time, but you do write from the heart and besides, life's too short to remain mortal enemies ... I guess I too can chalk it up to "art to appreciate and love"!
*sniff ... sniff*... *big hug*
I love wit.
Thanks everyone who read and commented.
(Audrey, I love you more, but don't tell John)
Dannielle, I hope you didn't choose to ignore that problem because you were afraid of hurting my feelings. I am always open to critique.
I love alot of people and things. I'm pretty open about my love. It's just a better way to be. Ok so I'll admit I can have my hatin' days. But for the most part I see good before bad.
From reading this I can tell you have a truly peaceful spirit. Love has a way of bringing that type of peace deep down in your soul. It brings light to you... others will be drawn to that.
Just can say how much I enjoyed this.
It's been a brutal week,(although not as brutal as it could have been.) and I cried when I read this. Too much of it touch a nerve.
Thanks. I needed the tears, and the reminder that loving is a good thing.
Hugs.
Love is a feeling that is independent of the satisfaction of any particular need or want. It is a positive feeling for the person (or object) itself, not for what it can do for you. Of course it develops because the person (or whatever) has been instrumental in satisfying a variety of needs or wants but once developed, it is independent of these needs.
This will not do me any good because it is out of print in English. (If you can read Japanese, though, it will make me a dime if you buy it.) A very much more involved explanantion of that theory of love can be found in, "Loving, A Psychological Approach" published by John Wiley and Sons, 1972. Used copies can still be found on Amazon or other sites under my name (Howard L. Miller).
No, I actually let the first version go because it worked fine *unless* it truly mattered that Lorraine was repeated. Since I have no major opinion of her, using her name twice made no difference on that level.
The rhythm of the sentence worked very nicely for having an identity to go with each possible reality, and if I were going to 'fix' the sentence, I felt it required another name. To do that, I'd have to pick someone, and *that* would intrude upon the content and quality of the piece.
I don't mind suggesting a change of 'whose' or 'than' or adding/subtracting punctuation, or even rearranging the order of words. However, to actually put a new identity into this piece -- which is no bit of fluff (as can be seen by some of the comments) -- would be completely dependent upon the author's sentiments.
The only reason I made a suggestion in my previous comment was because, thanks to John A., I could do so as a joke.
Criticism: You write: "I realize just how strange love is. Love that is appropriate in one relationship can be totally inappropriate in another."
But I didn't get that you explored the idea, and I loved the idea!
My heart welled up reading this. After I took my blood pressure meds, I reread it. My eyes welled up then, so I guess I made progress..
I'd love you to love me for other reasons, but then I know this is an essay, and that, you do in fact love me for other reasons. And the number one reason you love me is that I know this: That there is a gene that confers the ability to smell that yucky asparagus smell in your urine and not a gene that makes your urine smell.
Kisses.
thank you for this.
But I didn't get that you explored the idea, and I loved the idea! Feeling rushed is a huge problem for me when writing Gather articles. I worked on this for weeks, exploring several areas that I ended up only touching on in the final version. I probably should write for me, and not for the 500-words-or-less audience I imagine I am writing to. Thank you for that reminder.
I appreciate all of the great comments here, the serious discussion (since much of what I have written lately is silly), and the constructive criticism several of you offered.
I'm going to use you outrageously and publish my own article on this subject some time in the next day.
You got me really thinking about this last night, and I want to write something as an homage to friendship, and to divest.
I'm still in a stage of emotional response to this, so critiquing it is not on my agenda at the moment. I know you will understand. Plus, you know I think you rock.
Check out George tonight. : )
I feel the love!
( ;
I too do not love evil.
Bard's picture kind of really does personify that, no?
Wonderful essay on our word love and all the ways we use it and all the meanings of it, and what it means to you and how you use the word and idea "love."
I have been trying to purge this word from of my language except for
My children
My family
My friends
My romantic entanglements
My neighbors
My coworkers
The people on the freeway with me as we drive to work
The people . . .
Ok, I really am trying to not use it when talking about food, clothing, design, our natural environment, actually anything not human.
But, the idea of the word as a description of what makes us soar fits well as an adjective for anything that has that affect on our emotions, even if it is a perfectly ripe just picked peach.
No peaches to pick there.
(And tell Lyrical that 'g' word is in the dictionary. My mom said I could use it this one time.)
It would be fun to be a school project. I asked my mom if I could become one and she gave a big sigh and said, "If only it were that easy I'd get the car out of the garage right now." I guess she means she would choose that over the other option of an old man in Tennessee. But the fact is you are stuck with plain lil' ol' me.
Now, I'm on a new trail. How'd you know about Lyrical making fun of me for using words that are not real? Maybe you're one of her friends? She's you? You're her?
Thanks, Dani.
Nancy, I must admit to viewing "Steel Magnolias" numerous times also. It is one of my guilty pleasures.
:-(
Thank you Sandy, for being you!