Would a man have invented the concept of "Love" or would it have been a woman?
"Love" is the emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. We feel "Love" for our friends and family because we recognise this attachment and affection, we hang out, we socialise, we share common and not so common interests and that content feeling that we have when we are with these people, well that's "Love".
In philosophical context, "Love" is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion and affection. So we show each other "Love". Our actions toward the people we "Love" generally are reflective of this virtue, every human on the face of this planet knows this feeling and it's a feeling that can be captured by the simplest of acts or the grandest of gestures.
But "In Love" this a whole different pony altogether.
Firstly let me state, I have been "In Love" so please don't pencil me in as a hater. I found the answer to Foreigners 1984 power rock ballad "I want to know what love is", I know it isn't a 200ml bottle of perfume from Karl Lagerfield and I know that it's not an antiquated description for a tennis scoreline of zero.
"Love" is grand, it's euphoric and eternal, but it is flawed. I won't blame todays seven second attention span culture, for me falling out of "Love", but it does come into calculation. The world has changed so much in the last 30 years but the perceived pressure and perhaps innate feeling that we need to be "In Love" is still omnipresent. The 2.5 children, four wheel driving,picket fence brigade still rule the utopian roost.
But what about the practicality of being "In Love"? What if I fall for a young Bolivian lass whilst paddling on the Rio Grande? We share a half dozen Casquito's over a feast of empanadas and lechon, her beauty obvious, our distinct lack of a unifying language intoxicating, the humid air perhaps stifling my normal rational thought processes, it happens! This "Love" is doomed from the start, I'm booked on a Contiki bus in the A.M. and she needs to tend to her Uncle Mauricio's cocoa fields at daybreak. Australian immigration don't want to know about "Love", they want photos of us at xmas and joint bank accounts. This experience will be with me eternally just the same as "Love" is meant to be.
Kids if your "In Love" that's fantastic! But if your not, don't be in such a hurry to find it, you will probably miss the best moments and experiences of your life. And for those of you that are falling "In Love" at the moment here is a wonderful analogy that my good friend Grace told me this morning. "You can go to Woolworths, buy a frozen chook, go home and stuff it the oven as is and you will be fed, but you can also go to a butchers, purchase a free range organic chook, go home baste it, add some thyme, lemon, garlic and rosemary, salt and pepper your chicken and roast it and the results are going to be much better".
Muffy
"Love is friendship set on fire" Jeremy Taylor
P.S. The Bolivian story is an exaggeration of an experience I had asking for directions on the Metro in Paris, but none the less an eternal memory.
