metonymy4u

Love is at once the strangest and most familiar of responses. How many people do we love that we never tell? Yesterday sitting zazen, the roshi described what people mention at the end of life. Many things, he said, but one thing they do not dwell on: possessions. It’s mostly about relationships. Connections.

When I was 12 I asked a girl out for a date for the first time. TR was a smart, energetic Jewish girl with shoulder length straight brown hair, brown eyes that I thought were beautiful and freckles that I adored. She said no. I did not know it at the time, but it presaged a life of failed connections and attempts at connection. So I find myself wondering who in my life do I need to tell, “I love you,” besides my immediate family?

This is my picture of love: respect, trust, joy in their presence, sadness in their absence, urges to kindness and understanding no matter what the circumstances, even with an awareness of how this is not always possible. Still, the desire is there behind all other emotions. It led Wittgenstein to wonder, if one could kiss a picture of someone in an empty room?

What I don’t understand, at a cultural level, is our aversion to it. To saying certain words. “I adore her/him” seems to be acceptable, but “I love him/her” is not (at times). As if speaking French for a moment makes it ok. The language of love increases acceptance of the emotion. I know my fear is the fear of rejection and loss, but is that true of the entire culture? Or is it just a dumbly learned habit of action, no more important than a burning meteor that lives its life entirely above the surface of the earth?