Never has there been a word more filled with promise than this one. With just four letters, the word conjures up the noblest of thoughts, the richest of emotions, and the surest guarantees of fulfillment. The very sight of the word has the power to send even the most cynical of us to our knees. And yet, do we even know what it means?
I’m told that Sanskrit has 96 different words for love. I don’t read or write Sanskrit, so I can’t swear by that. But a guy named Robert Johnson said so. Not the Robert Johnson you’re thinking of, the blues man, though that would be cool, too. The Robert Johnson who was a student of Krishnamurti -- who probably actually knew Sanskrit.
But what is the point of having 96 words for something when you really only need one? Well, I think the point is that whenever anyone uses one of the 96 words in Sanskrit – everyone else knows exactly what kind of love they’re talking about. The rest of us English speakers, not so much.
If I say I love you to any of you, what does that mean? I can say it to my child, my partner, my pets, my mom, my friends. I can also say it about a painting, a sunset, a car, a phone, or a beer. Does it all mean the same thing? I can love the color blue. I can love a post on Facebook. I can love a movie. And I can love the face you just made.
We could say there were categories for the English word love, like romantic love, familial love, and friendship love. But these aren’t really adequate. Because the love of one’s child is quite different from the love of one’s siblings, or even the love of parents. And we don’t love all our friends the same.
There are definitely many kinds of romantic love. Everything from infatuation, to the kind that takes your breath away, to that which has survived years of marriage, kids, joy and loss. And of course, there is that blurry line between love and lust. Who among us has mastered the ability to always tell them apart?
There are even the ones we love though they cause us more pain than joy. Because anyone who has been there knows that even the best loves come with healthy doses of pain. As Sting wisely observed, Love is the child of an endless war.
Let’s say we’re just going to talk about romantic love. And just the variety of romantic love that is accompanied by racing hearts and sweaty palms. Of all the billions of stories told since the beginning of the human experiment, none is more common than this one. And yet every time we tell it to ourselves it feels brand new. Made just for us. And we’re sure that there’s never been another person who has ever felt this way. And maybe we’re right. Which means there are billions of individual romantic loves that all share nearly the same DNA, but are still as distinguishable as snowflakes and fingerprints.
There are those people who have really only had one romantic love their whole lives. But for most of us there have been more than that. And each of them has been different, even though we’ve used the same word to describe them all. The Beatles said that love is all you need. If love is that big, then how can one word be sufficient?
Why, with all of our creativity and ingenuity, have we not split the word into its potentially infinite parts. How can it be that we can split an atom but not a word? Especially a word as important as this.
Let’s not stop there. Let’s consider that we don’t even know what kind of word we’re talking about. Is it a noun or a verb? Is love something tangible that we can hold in our hands? Is it an action, something that we must do or that must be done to us? Or a feeling that arrives at our doorstep from lands unknown. And then disappears into the night.
Maybe love isn’t something that preexists at all, but something we build. Or maybe it’s the material we build with. Maybe it isn’t a thing at all, but a place we inhabit. Maybe it’s a way of seeing the world. Even a way of being in the world. Maybe it’s none of these. Or maybe it’s all of them. Sheryl Crowe said love is all there is. And I know a Medicine Woman who teaches the same thing, that everything is love, including fear and hate.
If there is nothing that is not love, then we have really, truly done it a disservice with our woefully inadequate one-word label. Or maybe not. Maybe love is too big to be contained in words. And so the best we can do is to come up with as simple a word as possible to point to a thing that is beyond all things.
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Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.
- Picasso
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