ON KINDS OF LOVE

every kind of love is valid, and every kind of love exists forever in some manner or other, even if just in its occupation of the realm of memory. the sort of love that can be translated by way of music is a particularly beautiful kind.

it may seem on the surface that human beings have, to a large extent, forgotten how to love. this might be the conclusion that one would reach after a half-assed observation of the species. but i'd like to assert that humans are perhaps just as capable of loving as they have ever been. the problem is simply that each person encounters so many people, of so many different kinds, and experiences so many different breeds of love, and thus doesn't know what to do with the floods of love that come to the heart. love is too often stifled because so much time is spent worrying about how one kind of love will affect other kinds of love, and how one kind of love will affect another person.

the answer seems not to be anything resembling the "free-love" movement of the sixties. rather, it seems to be this: consciously attempting to acknowledge, give, recognize, and experience love of all kinds, and exercising honesty in all realms as a necessary accomplice to love itself. i'm not condoning having multiple relationships of a romantic or sexual nature at the same time. i'm condoning loving people in platonic or brotherly ways and recognizing friendship and acquaintanceship and brotherhood and the like as valid forms of love.

people seem to be lonely so often because they forget that the love that comes to them from friends and family are just as important and real and nurturing as the love that hits like a stampede and lights the soul on fire as it runs around burning and crying out. the latter is a primal need, and the former is no subsitute for it, but the former is just as important in other ways.

(September 2007)