Blog Dis
Summer is for love
2025-07-17
One of my blog readers dropped me a DM, asking me why I had failed to mention the subject of love, when speaking about lust. Yes! You are absolutely correct, my friend. Where there is lust, there may be love to follow, though not necessarily.
What about love? What about the power of love to raise you highest upon that pedestal of happiness? What about love and its horrible crashing sense of defeat when loyalty has been replaced with betrayal? Voltaire, a profound French philosopher, believed that love is often confused with animal desire. He likened love to the same feeling a stallion has for a willing mare — she gnashes her teeth and kicks and screams in the wild act of horse-love. I believe Voltaire is spot-on. There are so many kinds of love that the word itself is ambiguous. There is undying love a mother or father has for their child. There is true love, unrequited love, free love and forbidden love. There is puppy love, best suited to the underdeveloped brains of preteens and teens, when all else takes a back seat. There is love of life and all its caveats, such as love of food, music, travel, strangers, art, dark alleys and animals.
The world is richer because of the human emotion of love. To be sure, the realms of writing and music are greatly influenced by love and heartache. Try to imagine the number of torch love songs that would cease to exist if love were absent. My own reality on the matter of love is more straightforward and blunt. I think love rightly belongs between the pages of a book. Within these torrid pages, love can be played out to perfection, the ending engineered to satisfy, to leave you with a warm and fuzzy feeling that can be repeated. Romance authors have made untold millions mining this territory of love, between their pages, and the plots rarely, if ever deviate: Boy meets girl (or boy). Boy loses girl (or boy). Boy finds girl (or boy), and their love is complete.
I'm no longer a young girl cherishing young hopes and dreams (or illusions as I call them), and my perception on the notion of love has changed. I believe now that love is the hard stuff, not the easy stuff (this is actually lust). You know you love him or her when they lose their job, and you carry the load, until your partner successfully lands back on their feet. You know you love him or her when they are diagnosed with an incurable disease, and you stay by their side, to watch them slowly decline. You know you love them when they are coping with a mental health issue, and your support is the foundation on which they lean to re-build their shattered state of being. Love asks you to endure the pain with dignity, patience and grace — which isn't easy, which is why this is love.
We each have your own version on the meaning and impact of love, and where love fits in our life. Some philosophers believe that we only ever truly love the first time we fall in love, and every time thereafter is an attempt to re-create our first love, though it is doomed to failure. If your heart is open to receive, love will find its way into you. But don't be surprised and cry and whine if that very same love turns your head in circles, as you attempt to comprehend the stupid things that love asks of you, that you're prepared to do for love. Love can still make fools of us all.
In the end, love takes no prisoners and we're all at the mercy of love and its capricious nature.
What about love? What about the power of love to raise you highest upon that pedestal of happiness? What about love and its horrible crashing sense of defeat when loyalty has been replaced with betrayal? Voltaire, a profound French philosopher, believed that love is often confused with animal desire. He likened love to the same feeling a stallion has for a willing mare — she gnashes her teeth and kicks and screams in the wild act of horse-love. I believe Voltaire is spot-on. There are so many kinds of love that the word itself is ambiguous. There is undying love a mother or father has for their child. There is true love, unrequited love, free love and forbidden love. There is puppy love, best suited to the underdeveloped brains of preteens and teens, when all else takes a back seat. There is love of life and all its caveats, such as love of food, music, travel, strangers, art, dark alleys and animals.
The world is richer because of the human emotion of love. To be sure, the realms of writing and music are greatly influenced by love and heartache. Try to imagine the number of torch love songs that would cease to exist if love were absent. My own reality on the matter of love is more straightforward and blunt. I think love rightly belongs between the pages of a book. Within these torrid pages, love can be played out to perfection, the ending engineered to satisfy, to leave you with a warm and fuzzy feeling that can be repeated. Romance authors have made untold millions mining this territory of love, between their pages, and the plots rarely, if ever deviate: Boy meets girl (or boy). Boy loses girl (or boy). Boy finds girl (or boy), and their love is complete.
I'm no longer a young girl cherishing young hopes and dreams (or illusions as I call them), and my perception on the notion of love has changed. I believe now that love is the hard stuff, not the easy stuff (this is actually lust). You know you love him or her when they lose their job, and you carry the load, until your partner successfully lands back on their feet. You know you love him or her when they are diagnosed with an incurable disease, and you stay by their side, to watch them slowly decline. You know you love them when they are coping with a mental health issue, and your support is the foundation on which they lean to re-build their shattered state of being. Love asks you to endure the pain with dignity, patience and grace — which isn't easy, which is why this is love.
We each have your own version on the meaning and impact of love, and where love fits in our life. Some philosophers believe that we only ever truly love the first time we fall in love, and every time thereafter is an attempt to re-create our first love, though it is doomed to failure. If your heart is open to receive, love will find its way into you. But don't be surprised and cry and whine if that very same love turns your head in circles, as you attempt to comprehend the stupid things that love asks of you, that you're prepared to do for love. Love can still make fools of us all.
In the end, love takes no prisoners and we're all at the mercy of love and its capricious nature.
