Love belongs to many places in many times. Love belongs to all things. Love prospers in all lands with a depth of clarity so bright that each of us understands its inherent meaning easily.
Love dwells in all people. At all times.
At a party one night in Athens two-and-a-half thousand years ago, Plato remembers speeches given by his friends about love. Socrates declared that ‘Love is the only subject I understand’. Phaedrus felt that love was the key to happiness. Aristophanes (who was at the same party) believed that love was the metaphysical drive we feel in our longing for our other half, our soul mate, the something in someone else that creates a wholeness to our being.
The Rumi of Persia taught us that he had spent the whole of his life looking for someone to love, and on finding that person, realised his error - they had always existed deep within his soul.
Yet there are many roads of love and to love, love can lead only to one place, to a greater love, to a greater understanding of love. Virgil told us Omnia vincit amor (Love conquers all) et nos cedamus amori (and let us, too, yield to love). St Paul wrote to the Corinthians saying that love suffers long, that love is kind, and endures many things. So, too, is it free. The freedom in love exists in its ability to love and to be loved, to transcend human emotion, to become sublime, to belong only to the whispers of God in realms where only love can hear. Aristotle believed that to love was to be joyful and to wish happiness on the person you love. He spoke of agape – a type of love not mentioned again until Jesus of Nazareth understood its meaning. Love thy enemy, Love thy neighbour. Agape is selfless love.
Love dwells in body and in spirit. Neither alone can attain true love. Love exists in both dimensions, in unification, in unity, maturing and flourishing authenticity.
Love is truth. Love never fails. There is no science or philosophy to love. There are no equations to finding love. Love is love. It does not belong to the few – it belongs to us all. Love is gentle, forgiving and the bind that holds us together. Love is the breath that permeates the smiles of each living thing. Love accepts and makes no demand. Love wants you as you are. Love cannot harm. Love questions but cannot harm. Love listens but cannot harm. Love watches but cannot harm. Love speaks truth but cannot harm. From the first yawn of dawn to the depths of gloaming, love cannot harm.
It has many languages, many emotions and many names. Love does not limit itself to one page, nor to the readers of one book. Love is endless. Love dwells in the human heart. Love belongs to the readers of all books. Love appears at awkward times, at awkward moments – is there ever a right time to love? There is no right or wrong time to love, only now. There is no right or wrong time to love, there just is.
Gustave Flaubert found love on an expedition to Cairo one evening in a small town on the western bank of the Nile in 1832. He had stopped at a place called Esna. His notebooks tell, “it was an unusually cold night, with a clear sky.” There he met a local girl called Kuchuk Hanem, who enchanted him. “We went to bed… she falls asleep with her hand in mine. She snores. The lamp shining feebly, casts a triangular gleam on her beautiful forehead. We told each other a great many things through touch.” Dreams of her followed Flaubert down the Nile, all the way to Aswan. He eventually turned back.
Love belongs to this world, it exists in this world. It exists in the sonnets we read, in the art we see, in the cultures we become, in the temples we know, in the smiles we see, in the food we eat. The love you have given so far has created all the love surrounding you now, it has created a love within others and enables each of us to be who we are, the way we are and where we are. Love is beauty. Love is truth. Love abides in spirit and makes itself manifest through action. It does not wound, nor is its native language divisive.
Love does not deal in absolutes. Love seeks to expand circles and not belong in exclusivity. Love always seeks to include, never to exclude. Love is not blind, nor claims to be. Instead, the true beauty of love is its ability to transcend all human judgement and prejudice.
And where does my love go when I’m thinking of you?
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