What is love? How do you define it?
With the arrival of February, I have started to think about Valentine’s Day. What do I want to do to let the people closest to me know that I love them? Should I give a card, candy, a gift, or offer a hug and a statement of my love? While contemplating this, I thought about how I viewed Valentine’s Day as a child.
When I was young, I learned that naked babies called cupids would shoot arrows into hearts. That meant love. Of course I knew that was silly, but we girls had fun making hearts with arrows through them and writing names on the hearts. I never did like the taste of those candy hearts with “love” words. But what fun to chose the words I wanted to give my friends in a valentine card. I eagerly read the messages on the candy hearts given to me. However, I preferred to receive a small box of chocolates.
It is too bad that our culture uses the word love so loosely and in so many different ways. Most of them are very superficial. For a word that represents something so important to our emotional well-being, we are very careless with it. Love is a word that holds great importance when it is spoken to a person, but I often say I love a blouse or other such object, which in truth is of little importance to me.
I am curious. What do you love? Let’s explore together. What does it mean to love an object? What objects in your life do you love? Why?