February 20, 2007

Horse 722 - I Love...

In perhaps one of those scarier moments of dagginess I think back to those days of 1992 when Semi-Hip-Hop-Christian group dc Talk came out with the album Free At Last. The opening track to this was the funkily misspelled Luv is a Verb.

It is perhaps quite well known that the Greeks had four words for their four concepts, and almost as well know that there is no direct word for it in most of the Eastern languages like Japanese, Korean and Mandarin. Perhaps the English word Love is not entirely silly, in there being only one word.

The noun and the verb in English (except for the variant which is a zero score in tennis etc) are in reality precisely the same thing. If someone were to say "I love chocolate" or "I love Top Gear", then the meaning although different in subject is still esentially the same as in "Jennifer loves Phillip" or "For God so loved the world that he gave His only Son".
Think about it, in all circumstances the object or person, surreal thing being loved is always the subject of some great interest.

Think about what your interests are, Did they happen to instantly happen to turn out like that? In quite a number of cases as many writers and philosophers have said, Love is as the direct result of choosing something; is therefore a highly active verb. If I happen to take a deep interest in something, then usually the investment that results is of some cost.

If you take this to its logical conclusion, all of us want to be loved deep down on some level because we have a need that someone should take an interest in us. I will love you not for your wit and talents, or pehaps some external beauty and charm but because of a distinct and obvious decision to do so. To love that person or thing for no inherant reason other than because it happens to be.

Think about the things in life that we happen to love: The chocolate is eaten, the football team loses, Jennifer and Phillip with both grow old lose their beauty, Top Gear only lasts 45 minutes. Even when God decides to love His creation, it happens to tell him to just piss off in as many words. So then, what the heck is the point to loving anything when obviously whatever it is will fail?

If you remember one simple fact it would be this God is love (1 John 4:8), since we're little reflections of that then it also follows that it must be someway connected to our nature; although we're imperfect, it's because we have to.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

i always get screwed over by love. love sucks

Rollo said...

'fraid not.

I was reading Essays In Love by Alain De Botton, who's a Swiss philosopher. He recently wrote a book called The Architecture of Happiness which looks at the ugliness of buildings.

While reading this I arrived at the conclusion that whilst he may be aiming around the idea, he didn't really have a clue and hence this diatribe