Love Is All You Need
by Louis Reynard
What is love? According to Google, it’s a question that lots of people want answered. “What is love” is the most searched for phrase on Google. It is truly the greatest query of them all. Who can define love? Anyone who has ever been “in love” with another knows that the lover is swept up in his feelings, produced by a kind of chemistry that (scientists say) emits from our brain and takes over our minds. But will the feelings last? Is it as easy to fall out of love as it is to fall into it? Yes, for sure, if the basis of the feelings is lust and emotion. If our love is true, we are passionately committed to our lover; through it all, thick and thin, “for better or for worse”. Anything less than a passionate commitment is just attraction based on physicality and emotion. Author and lecturer Gila Malonson writes, “Love is the attachment that results from deeply appreciating another’s goodness”.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in the early 19th century, offered her view of love in her classic, timeless poem:
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,
— I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!
— and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
—Elizabeth Browning
Let us always meet each other with a smile,
for the smile is the beginning of love.
—Mother Teresa
Love is always bestowed as a gift – freely,
willingly and without expectation. We don’t
love to be loved; we love to love.
—Leo Buscaglia
We can love without romanticism or passion. We simply value the other person for who they truly are. We focus on the good that is inherent in us all. In this way, according to Malonson, “you can love almost anyone”.
Intense, deep, cherished, caring love comes slowly, over time, and is the result of intimate knowledge and giving of ourselves to our lover. The more love we give, the more we receive. Erich Fromme writes, “Immature love says ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you.’”
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like
a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.
–Oscar Wilde
Being deeply loved by someone gives you
strength, while loving someone deeply
gives you courage.
–Lao Tzu
Give me my Romeo; and when he shall die,
take him and cut him out in little stars, and
he will make the face of heaven so fine that
all the world will be in love with night and
pay no worship to the garish sun.
–William Shakespeare
