FREE LOVE LETTERS

Love letter # 357

Love is one of those words – ideas, tropes, clichés – that gets misused all the time. Mistaken for lust and ownership, dependence and habit. We have, I’m certain, each been guilty of all of the above. Yet still we remain, despite the inadequacy of words and the grind of years. In spite of all our flaws and everything we’ve been afraid of. Having outlasted boredom and survived the temptations of wandering eyes.

Why? How? What for?

Or maybe the reduction of so-called ‘answers’ makes them an irrelevance. The analysis pointless. The resulting labels little more than catechism. Indeed, perhaps it does not matter if we love one another or not – only that together we are both better. Stronger, truer, more able to deal with the world. Better equipped for time and uncertainty. For the commonplace and complacent cruelties that swirl around us. For the act of living and the odyssey of dying.

In some ways this isn’t really a love letter at all. But whatever you call it, it is an acknowledgment. A thank you. A form of ongoing pledge. My feeble paean to you. As good a promise as I can ever make and as humble a troth as I suspect you would likely accept.

Or shall we just call it love – and leave it at that?