Love, of all things. How embarrassing is that?

The older I get the more I hear myself talking about love. I dunno how that happened, how my mantra changed from a steely eyed dispassionate graduate student chanting think, think, for God's sake think, people! to (mostly) an adult chanting love, love, for God's sake love, people!

The people on the Religion and Spirituality section of Yahoo!Answers who read my Q&A get headaches from rolling their eyes as far up into their heads as they can go. They've told me point blank that love is (A) sentimental, (B) a throwback to flower children and be-ins in the 1960s, and that most currently acrimonious of accusations, (C) not cool. And that part of me that would agree with them is still a very fresh memory. Seeing myself from their pov, I actually do embarrass myself on a regular basis. It's easy to see myself through their eyes and notice that I look like a campy cartoon character from the Yellow Submarine movie: outdated and treading that fine line between ridiculous and satirical.


But I chant on with as much dignity as a campy caricature can scrape up. I insist that this is my reality: that the only possible basis on which to build your life is love. On another board I frequent, one guy recently said that love was an emotion fueled by brain chemicals and so no good cornerstone for your life.

Me: The love I'm talking about is not an emotion.
Him: Well, if you're going to change the definition of words on your own we can't have a meaningful discussion.

I didn't respond because I don't know any more than that right now: that the love I'm talking about is not an emotion. It isn't addressed in many songs on the radio and Robert James Waller has never addressed it in a novel.

I do know that for me love is a decision. It's about as far from being an emotion as a algebraic formula is. It's way more about thought and willfulness than emotion, especially if by emotion you mean a feeling that comes over you which you can't cause or control. So in a way I have not really come too far afield of my original mantra of think, think, fer gawds' sake think. The love I'm talking about involves a whole truckload of thinking, questioning, introspection, rethinking, analyzing.

Love without thought seems weak to me. Love without a willed decision to love, seems sentimental and floppy. To limit the term love to an emotion is cripplingly idealistic; it wants love to be that thing that happens in chick flicks; it wants love to gallop in and take you over while you submit to its overwhelming power, but ironically it gelds love into something that will serve your own emotional needs first. Flannery O'Connor warned that "To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that will end in bitterness."

How wise Flannery was: she knew that the culture saturates us with the idea that love is a sweet, sweet emotion and emotions are spontaneous and uncontrollable. To agree with that even tacitly is to expect too much from outside sources and to expect too little from myself. It's laziness, basically, and laziness and love never co-exists.

Ok, I'm wandering now. I definitely need to spelunk this idea some more. Right now I'm just in the mouth of the cave trying to let my sight focus in the dark, wondering which way will lead me down into the bottom of the cave without smashing my face into too many stalactites.