Remember those old Love is….cartoons? The sketched boy/girl couple - naked, moon-faced and coy above a caption that attempted to define the indefinable in a soapy little sound-bite.
Love is…full of good intentions.
Love is...a song in your heart. Love is...never having to say you’re sorry.
(Oh really?)
Valentine’s Day: 14 February 2021, lockdown #3, day 42,...and what is love?
For the long-term, triple locked-down lovers among us the answer might well be as simple as….giving each other some space. But that would be glib. If fractionally true.
No, the many-splendored thing deserves a more thorough appraisal on a day dedicated to its tribute and after a year during which the collective human experience has meant we’ve come to need love more than ever - to give it, to receive it, to know it’s there.
It has a hard time - love. It can be buried for years beneath a carapace of fear, unsurety or pride - the ‘turmoil of thought,’ as Krishna put it. Love can be abused, rejected - even impersonated. It can linger a life-time in the heart without debut, company or confession. And for all that it is mighty, enduring, transformative and good, love too can be vulnerable, susceptible to erosion, and open to defeat. It takes a bold heart indeed, to love.
Valentine’s Day of course traditionally celebrates and encourages us to declare romantic love - perhaps its most irresistible, yet intriguingly mercurial variety. The one which, newly discovered, wrong foots us, dizzies us, elates, deflates and inspires us...causes us to make grand plans, proclamations and promises. It’s the stranger in an open car that tempts us in and drives us far, far away...from all that we recognise and know to be true, about sometimes even ourselves. It is a heady, sexy, life-affirming adventure.
You may already know this but something I discovered only recently, and discovered to my surprise, is that St Valentine - the Roman priest and physician who suffered martyrdom during the persecution of the Christians under Claudius II Gothicus in around 270 - is patron saint not only of lovers... but of epileptics and beekeepers too.
Could there be something in this? A clue perhaps. Could Valentine of Rome’s seemingly unassociated trio of heavenly responsibilities point to romantic love being the expression of a neurological condition that comes with a sting in its tale? Based on some of my own past experiences and those of many of my friends’ it doesn't sound entirely implausible.
But I jest. Partly. Why,...Shakespeare himself described love as ‘merely a madness’.
For centuries poets, playwrights, singers and artists have been creatively inspired by love. Religions have sought to define it - ‘effulgent manifestation,’ ring a bell? - and philosophers have waxed lyrical and highfalutin in their compulsion to solve its enigma and reveal its essence.
In our quest to understand love we have often misunderstood it - failed to recognise it, falsely branded it, and called it complicated. It isn’t complicated, but it is often compromised and obfuscated by that which is...i.e, us.
When the COVID-pandemic first hit Britain like a slo-mo tsunami after weeks seemingly of watching our Italian neighbours die in droves on the news, when we were ‘locked down’ for the first time and delivered the weird, dystopian edict that ‘all unnecessary social contact should cease,’ who among us didn’t begin either deliberately or instinctively to recalibrate. To pay attention with greater acuity than we might previously have been inclined to what really mattered.
And what happened? Love rose to the top. We acted on it. We held those nearest to us closer, cherished anew our families, valued more our friends, bonded with neighbours, and helped out strangers. We sent love in phone calls, delivered it to doorsteps, typed it in chats, made it ‘big’ and illustrated it with hearts - many and multi-coloured. Love, it transpired, wasn't that complicated after all.
No single one of us, anywhere, lives a life untouched by love. It’s our greatest common denominator - not COVID, not religion, not social media,...love. Whether we’re confident or not that we are its recipient, whether we feel and express it easily, or struggle to recognise and show it, we all have experience of love.
Too many of my friends have lost a parent in the last ten months. Not all of them to COVID, but all during COVID, so that they have had to endure the additional agony of socially-distanced funerals absent the solace a hug or a held hand can bring. In life’s rawest moments, when we are lost and bereft, laid bare and exposed, what else is there, what else counts...but love?
Love is implicit. It’s everywhere: in a smile, a tear, a gaze, a touch, a memory, a wish.. the air. It can be quiet yet profound, unspoken yet tangible.
Love is what’s left when all armour has been shed and distractions are gone.
It’s the bright light at the end of the tunnel when our eyes close for the last time. Love is all that remains.
Image by Jon Tyson.
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