Regular readers of this Substack series of commentaries, as well as others who know me and my byline, will no doubt be thoroughly surprised by this entry’s chosen topic. That topic is love.
Love, along with a fine taste in the classical arts or a gift for subtlety, is what most would know me by the least.
I am an unexciting white male, now older, who grew up in an ordinary fashion except for some longhaired days in the late 1960s and a checkered career in local newspapers. I share the same mild hang-ups and flaws with other males of my type and generation.
I am not good at love. I don’t talk about it. I have trouble feeling it, seeking it or knowing what to do with it when it’s in my grasp. I especially have trouble saying it (“I love you”) or allowing myself to open up and share it.
There, I’ve said it.
But I am also a good writer and, as a journalist, I know where to go to find answers and good stories when I don’t have any of my own. And, just taking a quick look around, it appears that there are lots of experts in the field of love. Just look at all the books, poems, songs and movies about love. Walk into any neighborhood bar and there’s a great lover sitting on every other barstool, am I right?
So how do you feel about love? How much do you stop and think about it? Do you have a definition for love? Everybody has had troubles with love, so what’s your story?
What the World Needs Now
There’s never been a time when the world couldn’t use more love in it, wouldn’t you agree? And that goes way back before Burt Bacharach wrote his song, “What the World Needs Now is Love” in 1965 or The Beatles recorded their “All You Need is Love,” a few years later.
And, of course, there are many different kinds of love and countless definitions. There is “true love,” we guess. Real, real love is supposed to be unconditional, but we’ve seen all kinds of love that comes with conditions anyway. There’s love at first sight; a Mother’s love; devotional love for Christ, Allah or Gaia; there’s something called puppy love and there’s platonic love, unrequited love, universal love and free love like the hippies used to do.
Then there is love that includes sex. The Greeks used the word eros as interchangeable at times for love. More recently, Eros was the name of a sex toy company. There’s lust and physical desires that aren’t the kind of love the world needs more of right now. But, don’t forget, the word love is both a noun and a verb.
Maybe, like me, you don’t have an ironclad definition for love. I like to quote the poet Robert Frost and say that I’ve had a lifelong “lover’s quarrel with the world.”
But we all should agree that love is free and it can’t be bought or sold. We can’t make someone love us, but I don’t think we can prevent it, either. Love is not a product with a trademark and, like someone said, love has its own universal language.
It’s funny but love can be the source of both joy and sorrow. There’s an ancient Latin phrase, “Amor vincit Omnia,” which means “love conquers all.” In his literary work he called “The Devil’s Dictionary,” author Ambrose Bierce said, “love is a temporary insanity curable by marriage.” That’s funny, but don’t risk laughing out loud.
The biology of love
Most of the time when we think about love, we think about all the emotions, feelings and psychology of its various stages and conditions. But there is a physical and biological aspect to love, too. When partners hug or snuggle, or when a mother nurses her baby, the body increases the amount of oxytocin hormone it produces. People actually feel tingles and heightened sensuality, which is why oxytocin is called the “love hormone.” We can’t believe there’s a big market for it, but you can actually buy oxytocin nasal spray. Is that what we’d call a love potion? But, if so, where’s the romance?
No matter what your hormone level might be, scientists, psychologists and others agree that moments of love can be very unpredictable. There is no “on” or “off” switch for love. In his novel, “Love Story,” Erich Segal famously wrote, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
You can’t talk about love for very long without bringing up the writings of William Shakespeare. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depths and breadth and height my soul can reach…” (Sonnet 43.) He also wrote, “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.” (A Midsummer Night’s Dream.) Thomas Mann wrote, “It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.”
CORRECTION: Sonnet 43 quoted from above was actually written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, not Shakespeare. Thanks to reader Judy Rice for pointing out our original error. R.A.
Modern love
Like everything else, love has been commercialized and packaged for someone’s profit. Valentine’s Day every February 14 is one of the most lucrative holidays for retailers who sell cards, flowers, candy and anything with a red heart on it. When you put love in the middle of a commercial you can be sure to both pull on some heart strings and a few purse strings, too.
Remember the TV spot with, “I love you, man,” that sold a certain brand of lite beer? There was a long-running TV series called “Love, American Style” that ran for five seasons on prime time Friday night television. It wasn’t a very good show, but it sold a lot of commercials.
Now we have digital love. Would you be surprised to know that 39 percent of new couples in recent years met through an online dating app? Where is the sentimentality in all that, we ask?
Our favorite grown-up’s children’s book has always been “The Little Prince,” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who wrote: “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched; they are felt with the heart.”
In another children’s book, Winnie the Pooh asked his friend Piglet, “How do spell love?” And Piglet answered: “You don’t spell it … you feel it.”
And that’s good enough for me.
— Rollie Atkinson
7-25-2024
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Another pleasant easy, thank you
Love is a quick and easy word, but as you say to what meaning? People say I love my school, pizza, band, or athletic shoes, but these entities can’t “love” you in return.
Two aliens in a Dr. Who episode pondered Earthlings “love”. To a request for a definition from his fellow alien, “a shared fantasy “ was the cogent reply, by the Earthly British writers of the TV program.
That definition resonates with me. I find pleasure and/or happiness in some things (there is a difference), but “Loves’s a Word I Never Throw Around”…. https://youtu.be/eqs7LLLEc4A?si=40Xw1cIBFD9ulYlc
Good column, but one glaring error. “How do I love thee…….” Was indeed Sonnet #43, but it was written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, not Shakespeare.