Love – a feeling for all seasons
AFTER watching The Most Reverend Michael Bruce Curry’s impassioned sermon on love at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, I debated the relevance and place of love in our world.
In my practice, the subject of love and often times the lack of, is a persistent theme.
I was touched by the openness and tenderness in the public display of love at the royal wedding. It talks to something in you about the hopes, potential and dreams of young love.
A poignant moment for me, while watching the wedding was seeing a reporter, interviewing members of the public about their views on the wedding. He questioned an older woman, possibly in her late sixties, about her views on the wedding.
“They looked happy, but I doubt it will last,” she cackled.
The interviewer lost his composure for a few seconds and then retorted that there were a lot of people who were happy for the royal couple and who wished them a wonderful future.
It was a moment that stood out for me, in the bliss and love of the day. I wondered what this woman had experienced of love in her life that had made her so jaded.
Generally, love seems acceptable in the bloom of youth even when it’s visible and overt. However, older couples appear more guarded and circumspect in their display of love, both when they are in new relationships and even those couples in the wonderful position of still experiencing love in a long-term marriage.
Why is this?
We are shaped by our experiences of life and particularly love. We tend to fall into the trap of thinking that love only relates to one type of love, romantic love. This is the love that we see in movies and the fairy tale that was the royal wedding.
Love takes so many forms, there is filial love; the love we have for our children; responsible or dutiful love; this is the love we have for ageing parents or relatives.
Platonic love that we have for friends, neighbours and even colleagues; spiritual love that we reserve for our inner self. Charitable love that extends to doing deeds for others.
The older we get, the more experiences we have, the more times we fall in and out of love. We lose and gain friends, we experience betrayal and loss. The sum total of these experiences and how we choose to process and absorb these into our life, is a strong predictor of how we view the world in the context of love.
No matter who we are or what our circumstances, we all desire love and acceptance in some form.
It’s possible to experience some type of love even if that love isn’t the fairy tale or romantic love of movies and royal weddings.