You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means... but that's just me.

I’ve been thinking about a scene in The English Patient – the movie, not the book that I am sort of reading at present.  I tried to find a clip on Youtube, but apparently it doesn’t qualify as popular enough to share on the Internet.

But the script goes rather like this:

Katherine - I wanted to meet the man who could write a long paper with so few adjectives.              

Almasy - Well, a thing is still a thing no matter what you place in front of it.         

Katherine - Big car, slow car chauffeur-driven car.                

Geoffrey -  Broken car.

Almasy - It's still a car.           

Maddox - Not much use, though.

Katherine - Love? Romantic love, plutonic love, filial love.Quite different things, surely.

Geoffrey - Uxoriousness. That's my favourite kind of love. Excessive love of one's wife.

           

Almasy - Now there you have me.

So… aside from the fact I listen to that soundtrack regularly – and again, am sort of reading the book in my non-existent quiet moments – I was thinking about that verbal exchange today.  Because of its somewhat humorous commentary on the different types of love.

Not so much a contemplation of my own writing – although it is very much a theme of this current project.  Rather, it seems to be a theme of present topics.

The other quote that streamed through my brain was one that is credited to both Anais Nin and The Talmud.  – “We see things not as they are, but as we are.”  

So love is not really the same word for you as it is for me.  An adjective might help one glean the intention or objective… but really, it is completely subjective… and let’s face it, not really as altruistic as we like to imply by using that combination of four letters.

But using it – in no matter what context – automatically implies a higher ground, doesn’t it?  If one says one acts or thinks with love… then the hate that goes along with it isn’t really hate.  Although I could argue the line between the two is very thin, I don’t think love is a credible justification for being an awful person.

There’s been a lot of noise this week about gay marriage… which is really a lot of noise about gay rights.  And that’s a good thing.  It’s means people are talking about it.  Disagreeing.  Rallying to support the side they think is right, whether it is right or not, is forcing the issue to be talked through.  Even if it takes anger, absurdity, and the exploitation of crappy chicken to do so.  I’m glad this is a headline now.  It is an important issue – even if it is an election ploy.   I’m thinking about it, talking about it, and making myself write about it again.

Which brings me back to this word love.  I’ve heard quite a few of my Christian friends argue that their beliefs against gay rights (marriage and all that a human being should have) are a demonstration of love.  Better yet, GOD’s love.  So, obviously, by utilizing that four letter word and its pre-cursor, that is the right attitude… and a gentler attitude.  The demonstration of a good heart.  Because buying a chicken sandwich is harmless (although your arteries might prove otherwise to that).  It doesn’t have any connection to the bullying that leads to suicide.  Or the funding of governments that deny life to a person for a gay identity either through imprisonment or execution.  It is love… so what if it causes a family a lot of pain because one partner can’t go see a dying beloved because they aren’t next of kin?  Maybe that is love.  And maybe I just can’t think of the right adjective for it now.

I know my definition of love is probably different, seeing the world more as I am.  I’m not married – so I suppose that inevitably makes me ignorant.  But I think love is going to the hospital and holding the hand of someone in the painful last stages of life.  Love is framing a child’s artwork on the wall.  Love is dropping everything to hold someone when their parent dies.  Love is cleaning the house even though it drives you crazy.  Love is sharing a life – all its beauty, all its ugliness.  It isn’t about creating ugliness.  

And okay… you know what?   I even think there is some of that God’s love out there.  I saw it last night.  I went on a walk when I got home after a crappy day.  I heard the crickets humming, smelled the sweet dew of twilight, and walked as quickly as I could to avoid the mosquitoes.  It was an incredible moment of solitude when something in the universe decided to say, chill out.  It’s okay.  The world is not going to fall apart.  Just let it be.

But again… that’s how I see the world.  And while I am going to try to take that serene moment of last night to chill out, I am not ever going to eat crappy fried chicken.