Love is (always) in the air

Mel White.

It may not seem like it these days, but love is in the air. You can see it, and feel it, if you look for it and are open to it. It's there.

And as a special reminder, Valentine's Day is coming right up, and Valentine's Day is all about love. And we all know what love is, don't we?

Well, maybe we don't.

Love is hard to define, for one thing. It's easier to describe than define, actually, although the poets have been trying to do both for years. For most of us, whether we're poets or not, whether we can define it or describe it or not, we know when we're in it (usually) and we know that when we don't have it, we want it; we go looking for it, we pray for it to find us. We sometimes forget it's always there for us, if we're open to it.

There are so many different kinds of love that it's hard to come up with just one definition. At the risk of sounding like Bubba talking shrimp possibilities to Forest, Forest Gump, there is romantic love, and parental love, and sibling love, and friend love and love for a higher power, and love for a group of people, and love for a pet, or a job or a place or a time or a thing ("I love my truck!")... and on and on we could go with naming different kinds of love.

I think one of the best descriptions of love, one that covers just about every form of love is a quote from 1st Corinthians. It goes like this (from the New International Version of the Holy Bible):

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not loved, I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not loved, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not loved, I gain nothing.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

The passage ends with these fine words: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Love is all around us; love is everywhere, and it comes to us in so many forms. But how many of us are still unhappy, still don't recognize love when it knocks us on the head, still try to use love sometimes as a weapon to hurt someone else? How many of us pay more attention to the unease and fear that often also surrounds us?

Just think how much easier and more beautiful and safer and rewarding life would be if we all remembered that love is kind and gentle, not jealous or devious, that love doesn't keep score, and that it is always present, if only we choose to see it.

That love is available to us even when we are acting ornery or being unlovable; that love will sometimes find us when we least expect it. That love, when we have it, should be cherished and guarded and never be put in second place to anything, ever, for any reason.

That love is in the big things – like marriage and family and friendship – and it is also in the little things, like simply being there for someone, or caring and sharing and respecting someone else's feelings.

That love is something you can feel and you don't need anyone else's permission; that love is something you can accept and never worry that you'll be tired of it or so full of it that you can't accept more. That love is the one thing you can give away and never run out of; that love is the one thing that actually grows and multiplies whenever it is given away.

John Lennon, one of those poets able to sum up the power of love in five words, said it as simply and succinctly as anyone else was when he wrote "all you need is love." Indeed.

Happy Valentine's Day to you all, and remember that every other day of the year, love is also in the air and a thing to be embraced and celebrated.

© 2025 Mel Makaw. Mel, local writer/photographer and author of On the Bright Side, a Collection of Columns (available locally at Tehachapi Arts Center), welcomes your comments at [email protected].