Sunday, January 21, 2007

Definition of love

Definition of love.

Aside

Love winged my Hopes and taught me how to fly
Far from base earth, but not to mount too high:
For true pleasure
Lives in measure,
.Which if men forsake,
Blinded they into folly run and grief for pleasure take.

Early songs about 1600

Here’s one:  love is meeting for lunch and talking till the last train home.

And another: love is when he enters this year’s date on every page of your cheque book in case you forget what year it is.

Have you got a definition of love?

27 comments:

kenju said...

I'll have to think about MY definition of it.

I love the poem; too bad I didn't know (and believe it) in my young years. I always flew too high and lived to regret it!

Michele sent me.

Pat said...

Hi Judy: Looking forward to yours.

Jean-Luc Picard said...

I like those definitions!

Michele sent me this way.

Pat said...

Thank you Jean-Luc!

Sam, Problem-Child-Bride said...

Ooh! I'll have to have a bit of a think but I do believe that love is having to say you're sorry, not because it is expected but because you have to.

These are beautiful sentiments, Pat. What a nice way to start off a Sunday.

Pat said...

sam: yes that's true whereas the 'never having to say you're sorry' is just not.

Bobkat said...

Lovely sentiments.

I'm not sure I have a definition as such but it certainly means putting up with someone's annoying little traits and loving them for it!

Michele sent me.

Anonymous said...

Hey there. Michele sent me.

My definition? Well, there are many. One I think of is "Love is a light kiss and a murmered "thank you" on my temple when I am in the midst paying the bills."

Another one is "Love is an attack hug from a six-year-old fresh from school."

Pat said...

Blond girl: the second one's a honey.

Unknown said...

Love is when your kids let you use the bathroom all by yourself!

Here via Michele

Pat said...

Welcome Margalit! Good one!

Dr Maroon said...

Kim Ayres sent me.

There is a fantastic sonnet by our Will (who else), perhaps The Apprentice may identify it, which is all about how everything seems so awful and ghastly, and black and white, until, until love suddenly lights everything up. I said it was one of Will's. He does it better.

Also spoons.

You can't really do spoons in bed unless you're in love. You can, but it's not as good.

test fish said...

if i'm being flip or lazy, i usually just quote something cynical.
something along the lines of
George Bernard Shaw's Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.,
or the Johnny Rotten quip Love is two minutes fifty-two seconds of squishing noises. It shows your mind isn’t clicking right.


if i'm not being flip or lazy...
i've always been wary of the word 'love', and can never bring myself to use it in any serious sense.
it's not that i don't believe that the emotion exists, or that i don't think it's valuable -- because it does, and i do -- but more that i don't feel comfortable with the word itself.
such a small and shop-worn-much-handled word for something so enormous, you know?
it doesn't seem right.
which is probably why i really like this Margaret Atwood poem.

but, more simply, i also like this passage (from Jeanette Winterson's "Written on the Body")
We are friends and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often.

Pat said...

Doc: you never fail to raise a smile. Let's hope the apprentice can enlighten us. Love and spoons definitely go together.

Pat said...

amy: thank you for that. The poem is great but Jeanette's piece really hits home for me. A lovely contribution.

apprentice said...

Not sure which sonnet Dr M means, but this one is lovely.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

apprentice said...

I think Burns does love best. This is a favourite of mine:

My heart is sair - I dare na tell,
My heart is sair for Somebody;
I could wake a winter night
For the sake o' Somebody.
O-hon! for Somebody!
O-hey! for Somebody!
I could range the world around,
For the sake o' Somebody.

Ye Powers that smile on virtuous love,
O, sweetly smile on Somebody!
Frae ilka danger keep him free,
And send me safe my Somebody!
O-hon! for Somebody!
O-hey! for Somebody!
I wad do-what wad I not?
For the sake o'somebody

Pat said...

apprentice; ye have nae let us doon!
Oddly 'love is not love which alteration finds' was going through my head all yesterday. whether or not it's the one Doc means, it is certainly up there with the best.
And it's only fitting we have a Burns at this time of year. Thank you Anna.

Dr Maroon said...

You certainly haven't let us down, Apprentice. Well done that girl.
As a Scotsman, I am always amazed at Burns' romantic tendencies. Perhaps he's the exception that proves the rule.

Pat said...

It was a good idea of yours doc.

Anonymous said...

Caz n Jax

Pat said...

dp: well said young man!

neena maiya (guyana gyal) said...

Love is being understood, accepted. It's also understanding and accepting. At least that's how it is for me, that he's my best friend in the whole world.

Drama Queen said...

Better late than never - my definition of love (totally not in my own words).



Without you every morning would feel like going back to work after a holiday,
Without you I couldn’t stand the smell of the East Lancs Road,
Without you ghost ferries would cross the Mersey manned by skeleton crews,
Without you I’d probably feel happy and have more money and time and nothing to do with it,
Without you I’d have to leave my stillborn poems on other people’s doorsteps, wrapped in brown paper,
Without you there’d never be sauce to put on sausage butties,
Without you plastic flowers in shop windows would just be plastic flowers in shop windows,
Without you I’d spend my summers picking morosley over the remains of train crashes,
Without you white birds would wrench themselves free from my paintings and fly off dripping blood into the night,
Without you green apples wouldn’t taste greener,
Without you Mothers wouldn’t let their children play out after tea,
Without you every musician in the world would forget how to play the blues,
Without you Public Houses would be public again,
Without you the Sunday Times colour suppliment would come out in black-and-white,
Without you indifferent colonels would shrug their shoulders and press the button,
Without you they’s stop changing the flowers in Piccadilly Gardens,
Without you Clark Kent would forget how to become Superman,
Without you Sunshine Breakfast would only consist of Cornflakes,
Without you there’d be no colour in Magic colouring books,
Without you Mahler’s 8th would only be performed by street musicians in derelict houses,
Without you they’d forget to put the salt in every packet of crisps,
Without you it would be an offence punishable by a fine of up to £200 or two months’ imprisonment to be found in possession of curry powder,
Without you riot police are massing in quiet sidestreets,
Without you all streets would be one-way the other way,
Without you there’d be no one to kiss goodnight when we quarrel,
Without you the first martian to land would turn round and go away again,
Without you they’d forget to change the weather,
Without you blind men would sell unlucky heather,
Without you there would be
no landscapes/no stations/no houses
no chipshops/no quiet villages/no seagulls
on beaches/no hopscotch on pavements/no night/no morning/
there’d be no city no country
Without you

Pat said...

GG: I'm happy you have someone like that. Great definition.

Pat said...

DQ: thank you for that. I shed a tear or two and wonder where it came from?

Pat said...

DQ: PS my guess is Roger Mcgough?