Love
“Being
deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone
deeply gives you courage.”
Lao Tzu
So, today is Valentine's
Day and Ash Wednesday—is that something like the opposite of the
harmonic convergence? The beginning of Lent, when Christians are
supposed to sacrifice and consider their transgressions, and the day
of Dionysian delight falling on the same day, seems somehow wrong on
a many levels. In fact, February 14th was the day that St.
Valentine was killed in Rome in the 3rd century.
Legend has it that he fell in love with the jailer's daughter while
awaiting execution, and left a note for her signed, “Your
Valentine.” Also, the very next day, February 15th,
began the Festival of Lupercalia, when Roman girls wrote their names
on slips of paper to be drawn out of a jar by Roman boys. They were
then paired for the duration of the festival. Some of them fell in
love and later married. Thus, these two very different events are
forever linked—Valentine's death and blushing love. How very Roman!
I am hardly in a position
to write about romantic love—but that, of course, will not prevent
me from doing so. All I can say is this; romantic love is like the
pairing of the boys and girls at the festival of Lupercalia—it's
fabulously exciting, but often time-limited. Everyone remembers their
first love. That feeling of being “in love” is so grandiose and
all encompassing that we never forget the object of our affection as
long as we live. That being said, love actually gets better over time
if it's tended to with the same care one gives a child. One of the
things we too often forget is that romantic love does not flourish in
isolation—it needs tender loving care.
Like all living things,
love changes over time. If we stay together, and work at the
relationship, if we don't fall into the trap of taking one another
for granted, love turns into something as rich and filling as a
slice of warm apple pie—with ice cream. After the first rush of
neuro-chemicals, we settle into getting to know the person behind the
hot flash. Love can grow in that environment to become the very heart of
our existence. Not a bad fate, I must say.
What love is NOT is a
relationship that “saves” us; that completes us, or that mirrors
our idealistic notions of what love “ought” to be. We are not
extensions of one another, nor are we put on this earth to serve each
other's needs. Love flourishes in freedom, in celebration of
differences, in appreciation of each individual exactly as they are.
(Cupid, you will remember, has wings—he flies free.) When all those
ingredients are present, there is nothing better on this earth than
mature love.
I leave you with a quote
from that great lover, Charles Schulz: “All you need is love.
But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.”
In the Spirit,
Jane
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