Where is love?  What is love? How do you define love? We’re bombarded daily with love messages. We’re told that ultimate happiness must include a loving a “significant” other.  If you don’t happen to be in love you may be perceived as somehow less happy or even incomplete.

Love sometimes expressed in saccharine sweet poems in cards; trite moon-in-June verses, which must presented to our lovers on the proper date. We are conditioned to worry whether we have chosen the right expression of our devotion. Endless and ubiquitous tabloid fodder chronicles the loves and affairs of anyone and everyone whose name we know.  We see Brad and Angelina, today’s paragons of celebrity love, as we go through the checkout line at the market?  Our concepts of love are buffeted by the publicity and 24/7 media coverage.  Everyone seems to have an opinion.  We are subjected to endless advice for the loved or lovelorn. Our own observations on the subject only work on other people.  A blind spots as humans - all our brilliant insights into the loves, affairs or sex life of friends, family or the famous somehow doesn’t work when we look in the mirror. Why is that?

Where do all these definitions of love come from?  The training starts early and is inescapable.  Right after we learn Momma and Poppa we are expected to learn “I wuv you”.  We discover early that there is a proper catechism of love.  When a relative or significant other murmurs “I love you,” we must immediately repeat the litany back.  “I love you too.” Or maybe “I love you more.” These are the only acceptable responses.  The response must be immediate.  A pause before the required response could be dangerous. Woe to those of us who don’t conform to this necessary format.

We are taught from birth that “true” love will lead us to happiness and fulfillment.  There is an Aristotelian concept that we are all destined to go through our lives in search of our other half.  Finding this other half is a necessary component of happiness.  What a heavy burden to place on our lover!  Society reinforces the idea that we can only find true happiness and fulfillment with the discovery of this magical (perhaps mythical) perfect-fit “other”. Humans make mistakes in this search for their destined one and only perfect mate.  How else could the divorce rate be explained?  I’ve always wondered, on a planet bulging with billions of people, how anyone could know with certainty that they have found their perfect other half?  A lifetime isn’t time enough just for the interviews!  We wait for true happiness, assured by society that happiness is not a solitary experience.  We wait hopefully, we hunt, our neediness on our sleeve, searching for the “other” part needed to be truly happy. 

What’s Love got to do With It?  Let’s look at other kinds of love.  We are exhorted to love other theoretical concepts with unwavering passion and commitment by family, friends, our churches and the media.  Religion describes divine love, a love transcendent. We are instructed in the proper litany to express this love. It must be expressed in the proper way, with the proper attitude, at the right time, maybe even in the right place.  We discover that other ways of expressing or defining God exist but we are told they are less valid or even evil.  Wars continue to be fought and countless people killed over the proper expression of Love of God.  The right words necessary, the proper obeisance essential the price of getting it wrong eternal.  Yikes!

I pledge Allegiance to the flag….or, My Country tiz of thee, sweet land of liberty…  Love of our country of origin.  We’re taught from our earliest years that loving our country, whichever one that might be, is both noble and necessary.  We are drilled proper ways of expressing that love. Politicians pronouncements, policies or actions of the government are confused with the country itself. Surely a country is not just current events.  Even the best of lovers disagree. Blood is regularly spilled in the name of the policies of groups of people organized around the fiction of a geographic area designated by lines on a map as a country. History shows these lines are mere ephemeral expedients yet we must control who crosses these imaginary lines.  We are taught we must love our country right or wrong.  Yet when people in other countries are exhorted to love their country, we call it propaganda.

How about sports? People do love sports. Games. I had a powerful example of love of a sports team recently when the Louisiana Saints won the Super Bowl.  I watched the game at the home of a friend who grew up in New Orleans. She had a bunch of buddies from the Big Easy visiting for the occasion.  The win brought screams, tears of joy, racing hearts and woops of triumph.  One woman told me I would have had to grow up New Orleans to understand.  She said she had spent her whole life loving the Saints, even knowing they would break her heart year after year. I was taught the proper way to express this devotion…Who Dat?

You might begin to wonder where I am going with this examination of unrelated expressions of love. What has this got to do with me?  What’s Love got to do with ME?

We trivialize love by expressing love of chocolate, sports, designer labels, favorite foods, TV shows and an endless list of trivial everyday stuff. All these expressions of love, valid in some contexts, are not what I’m talking about.  We are all attached to certain things with inordinate passion.  Sometimes we say we NEED these things to be happy.  But this is not the love I am looking for.  We have been taught the idea and feeling of how love should look and feel.  We are conditioned to believe we need love in our lives to be complete. Consider your list. We all have a long list of people, places, ideas and things that we love.  Think it through.  Enjoy the comfort and contentment you find there. It’s good to love.

I wonder how many of us have put ourselves on the list.

I love myself!  This is a tricky expression of love.  If we are overly enthusiastic in loving ourselves, our EGO croons “Yes you do!” and friends might say we’re conceited.  Loving the ego’s version of who we are is not what I am trying to get to. This bag of bones and assorted other parts we recognize in the mirror is just another thing. This is a slippery concept.  It is not egoistic love I would like to find.  Egotistical love enables crushing and diminishing others and swells us with the pleasure of being right.  The love I am trying to find, express and manifest is the love that is truly at the foundation of all other expressions of love. This is not trivial moon-in-June stuff.  Can we know love or recognize love if we don’t begin with an ecstatic loving connection ourselves?

I’m fumbling toward an emotional and intellectual place where I can express love more freely.  I want the joy of LOVE in my life as a daily fundamental bedrock fact.  This LOVE transcends circumstances, daily trials, physical discomfort, emotional challenges, momentary sadness – you know LIFE in all its endless everyday messiness.  With the image of Tina belting out “What’s Love Got to Do with It” as my mnemonic, every morning as I wake, before my ego has firmly settled into the saddle of my consciousness, I sing to the day, the mantra, “What’s Love Got to do with it?  I renew a daily commitment to pause to ask before I act, “What’s love got too do with it”… to ask if whatever I am about to say or do affirms love and life.  Are my choices based on love or programmed reaction? Am I making statements of love and acting from core bedrock love or merely reciting the litany I have been programmed to say?

LOVE has everything to do with it.  Behind the various litanies and catechisms is a core idea. I want to grasp it and live by it. Love others as yourself. Do to others as we would have them do to you. But start by loving yourself.  It seems like such a simple idea doesn’t it?  Practice LOVE!