Love

As if we could fail to notice, today is Valentine’s Day.  In addition to chocolate the day makes me think about love.  My faithful help, dictionary.com, gives twenty-eight entries for love which I decline to include.  Who needs more reasons to be mystified on the subject? 

Despite reading the dictionary I’m no expert on how to get more love, how to make love easier, how to express our love more effectively, how to make it last or find it fully reciprocated.  Instead I offer a poem, Liebst du um Schonheit, written by Friedrich Ruckert (1788-1866) I heard last month.  The poem is included in a set of songs composed by Gustav Mahler in 1901 known as the Ruckert-Leider.  Below is the English translation from German.

If You Love For Beauty                       

If you love for beauty,
Oh, do not love me!
Love the sun,
She has golden hair!

If you love for youth,
Oh, do not love me!
Love the spring,
It is young every year!

If you love for treasure
Oh, do not love me!
Love the mermaid,
She has many clear pearls!

If you love for love,
Oh yes, do love me!
Love me ever,
I’ll love you ever more!

These words speak to me of how I want to be loved and the way I should love.  People are not mythical creatures, celestial bodies or seasons.  We, as fabulous, finite-in-body humans, are in love relationships with other temporal humans.  We are imbued with wonders and flaws.  We are each worthy of love not because we are superhuman but precisely because we are not.  The sun does not need our love, but we need love from each other and love from ourselves.  We are, after all, also in relationship with our own selves.  We can receive and express love in earnest not for beauty like the sun, wealth or endless youth but for the relationship itself.    

If you want to treat yourself to a Valentine, here is a link to hear the poem performed:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht1OkPN6Zso&feature=related