“The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved.” ~Victor Hugo
Of all of the great people who have written about love, it’s difficult to choose a favorite. There’s always Shakespeare who, in Sonnet 116, said that love is a marriage of true minds unaffected by the personal flaws of the other or the ravages of time. Oh, and he says it so well:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
I think Wynonna Judd got her inspiration from this Sonnet when she said in Only Love:
Peaceful waters, raging sea
It is all the same to me
I can close my eyes and still be free
When the waves come crashing down
And thunder rolls around
I can feel my feet on solid ground
Only love sails straight from the harbor
And only love will lead us to the other shore
And out of all the flags I’ve flown
One flies high and stands alone
Only love
It’s not the sweetness of love that distinguishes it, but its permanence. Its hardiness. Its ease and steadfast nature in the face of storms. Because there will be storms. But love won’t bat an eye. Love will cheerfully watch it all like a smiling Buddha on a sunny day.
When I was in college and put on a bunch of weight from drinking beer and eating nachos, my favorite lyrical rendering of love came from Squeeze in If It’s Love:
If it’s love does it matter
If I’m thin or I’m fatter
If it’s love then it feels like I’ve won the pools
Although, I guess Shakespeare covered this when he said:
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Alas, love is one of those concepts that is so easily and often confused with other strong emotions:
Infatuation: “Love is when you shed a tear and still want him, it’s when he ignores you and you still love him, it’s when he loves another girl but you still smile and say I’m happy for you, when all you really do is cry.”
Fantasy: “The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.” ~William Somerset Maugham
Allegiance: “If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don’t, they never were.”
Lust: “The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.” ~Madame de Stael
Need: “Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you’.” ~Erich Fromm
Admiration: “The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.” ~Carl Sandburg
Want: “We always long for the forbidden things, and desire what is denied us.” ~Francois Rabelais
The rub is that the only way to tease out the difference is to experience it. Hence, if you’ve never really been in love, you can’t. And if you are in love, then the differences between it and other feelings are completely obvious and identifying them hardly matters anymore.
This is probably why most people who counsel the uninitiate say, “you know when you know.” So, I’m truly grateful for Shakespeare who cared enough to try to describe it and even go so far as to stake his reputation on it:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
The Mayor
