Lots of Love! South of France Summer, 2005
Got another idea for an “essay” thing. By the way, thanks again for so closely “critting” my effort on PPFuture, ?? this time something to do with a person’s capacity for love and how it is shown. The Greeks had it right – like the Eskimos with countless words for snow. The Greek snow was human nature … countless words to describe our feelings for others, the good feelings. I’ve thought about this all my life.
To give a simple example: you know how Inez (the pleasant plump elderly friend of Beth’s mother) and her like come across. They’re very loving. But I’m not at all like that. So what is this thing we call love? The Greeks probably had a word for Inez’s version. It’s all to do with personality and how one chooses to manifest or send out the feeling. I believe that I showed some kind of love towards my students, let’s call it a professional empathy, then I think I display some kind of something when I stop and rescue a living creature. Maybe that’s compassion though. Then there’s helpfulness – nobody goes out of their way unless they have some kind of loving feeling. There’s also the love one can show for a painting, a writer, an action, a hobby or simply being alive. It’s endless.
So one can wonder how we bring up youngsters in a hugely competitive school environment – many of them at single-sex monstrosities – and expect them to come out able to show simple love for another person. They manage to get hitched and go into the reproduction cycle, and then groom their kids to continue this cycle. Well, that’s fine, but what about the increasing number of people who don’t do this? Are they less loving? I often think of my Aunt Jo in this respect, a spinster and book lover – surely she was a double for Colette in some ways!
I see all kinds of people out there who are soft, caring, kind and loving. It’s as if they’d love anything and everything. I think they must have been brought up that way. I’d love to know what my grandmother’s parents were like, because she was possibly the softest, gentlest, golden smiling human being I’ve ever met. My mother was grandma’s daughter, receiving some of her qualities for sure, my mother having a lovely smile.
OK, I haven’t expressed it very well, because it’s too personal, but I’ll get there I hope in the next few months, if I return to this … or not!
The Movement of Love Sept. 30 ‘06
The thought came to me suddenly that there is a real cause of loss of love or maybe even love itself never starting, and that’s to do with the type of person you are and how you regard your partner as the sort of person you want him or her to be.
For example, some men put women on a pedestal in their minds and need them to be there for them to have romantic ideals and feelings. On the other hand, some women want their men to be big toughies who treat them roughish so they can look up to them and feel protected. Well, that’s just my opinion. I’d have to do some research.
Now the whole point of this is that you don’t always get what you imagine.
People change. The romanticised woman turns into a harridan possibly through no fault of her own but, for sure, because she didn’t see that it was not what her partner wanted. Equally the tough guy may well turn out to be a tad more sensitive than the woman thought she’d got. He no longer seems able to protect her in the way she thought it was going to be. He has become something else perhaps moving with the times that dictate you should be less chauvinistic and manly, or whatever.
The thing is your perception of the partner you want in the beginning is not what you’ll get later, either through your changing views or your partner’s changes. The Beatles nailed it!
“Nothing you can know that isn’t known (love)
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown (love)
There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be, it’s easy
All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need.”
Then there’s the great poet, Rupert Brooke.
These I have loved
These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon.