3x Thursday

(Link in blogroll)
Ah Love!

1. What is love? Do you believe in it? Why/why not?

I will refer you here. I do believe in it; I believe it is rare and beautiful and much more positive than the list in the link, with all its 'defined by negatives' senses. I think love is terribly difficult to recognize in most cases, and even harder to accept gracefully. I also think that one of the only ways to believe in and know about love is to have experienced it, but that knowledge and experience ruins us for pale imitations that masquerade as love. Unless you have been there, you can't understand. And once you have been there, and left or lost that love, every subsequent love teaches you more about it. I love the last line in the translation: "Love extravagantly." Amen to that!

As for why I believe in love, it's because I have been there.

2. Have you ever been in love? Are you still?

Yes. Yes. But to clarify, "in love" is something different from "loving." One is a state of being. The other is active.

3. Do you believe everyone in this world is capable of love? Why/why not?

Yes, of course. Even the most evil people love something. We (i.e. society) may find that love inappropriately expressed, or horrific in its flowering, but that doesn't change its central quality. I think love is easily strangled and stunted and twisted by the world until it can only be recognized by its passion and purposefulness, not by its kindness and hopefulness.