February 14, 2014

Cynical Love and Less So

As today is Valentine’s Day, it is time to lay aside talk of brands and marketing and concentrate on the love-stuff.  If ever there was a word that divided opinion, it seems to be Love.

Katharine Hepburn is one of the more Romantic Souls, who said (no doubt in a husky love drenched voice):  “Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only with what you are expecting to give – which is everything”.  This we like.  This is the stuff of Love-in-old-Movies.  Proper black-and-white wistful love.  Love to cuddle up on the sofa to.

Others have been less glassy-eyed.  Ambrose Bierce, writing in  The Devil’s Dictionary gave us the now-clichéd: “Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage”.  Other more wistful cynics include Charles Bukowski, who said: “Love is kind of like when you see a fog in the morning, when you wake up before the sun comes out. It’s just a little while, and then it burns away. Love is a fog that burns with the first daylight of reality”.  A poetic start and then, well, less so.

Gentle readers, tomorrow it will not be permissible to write aimlessly about Love. So enjoy mulling the subject today, whatever your view!