WHAT IS LOVE (MUSING FOR THE ROMANTICS)
Imagine you’re at a wedding. A family member recites a poem that speaks of 2 souls traversing the planet to find each other. A marriage celebrant asks the couple to declare their love and commitment to each other. The couple take turns vowing eternal love.
For weddings it is inescapable. If you’re on this blog you may be considering a course in wedding celebrancy. So perhaps we should really try to understand what love really means. Try is the operative word. Truth be told songwriters, philosophers, wedding celebrants and Mills and Boon novelists alike will muse upon the idea but will never quite come to a place where the belief can be set in stone.
Love is inarguably the most common theme found in poetry and song. If it’s not dominating a work of literature, song or film you can still find it as the obscured foundation in a great percentage of written and visual art.
What is the strict definition of love?
Oxford dictionary gives the primary definition as “an intense feeling of deep affection.” The Urban Dictionary considers love as a verb with its primary definition, ““The act of caring and giving to someone else.”
I started writing this blog trying to define love but ended up simple musing on the subject in my realisation that love is indefinable. I’ve let the typing fingers move with the mind’s flow. Love rarely has a form so neither will this article.
Love is a complex feeling. There are no metrics that can measure depth, height, or intensity. That’s why it can be confusing. That’s why we can get tongue-tied when a partner asks, “Why do you love me?” We often lean into listing things that we like about them.
Love is an experience. It’s an experience that we can enjoy a million times over and still not quite understand. Love can soothe the wild beast, but love can also send that beast into an unrestrained frenzy!
Love is different at different times to different people.
The brotherhood or sisterhood vibes in a rugby shed after a hard-fought victory can cause the hardest headed prop forward to think “I love these guys!” and that love couldn’t be argued. There’s one element; love is a binding force.
Sometimes we conflate love and lust and sometimes the two are in harmony.
Sexual attraction can catalyse love.
Love has a spectrum. At one extreme end is its absence. It is neglect. On the other end is the smothering.
True, wonderfully warming love stands in the middle and reciprocates, values, guides, frees, listens, allows independent thought, shares the heavy load, runs into a burning building, dances in the rain, speaks truth with empathy, swallows pride, spreads rose petals across the bed, washes the dishes…
Love is a purpose.
Love is a verb.
Love is a fighter…
And a lover.
Love is an emancipator.
We may never be able to cement the definition of love but do we really need to? Part of the thrill of love is the opportunity to experience it differently every time we partake of it.
If you or somebody you know would make the perfect wedding celebrant, give us a call or drop us a line now. We’d love to have a no obligation chat about whether or not this course is suitable for you. Rose Training Australia are the number 1 course providers for CHC41015 Cert IV in Celebrancy.