Love Or Loving

To lose one's capacity to love, would be an indescribably cruel life event. Today, in an early morning thought ramble, the question was "What would be a person's greatest loss". I thought of things like people we love, things we have that mean something to us, freedoms and rights and came up with one answer. We can lose anything or everything and feel empty and lost and haunted but with time, we can become used to that loss even though we never forget what was lost.  But to lose being able to love would create in one, an inhuman void. Loving sustains us when all else is lost. Loving has endless forms and all of them are vital elements of what makes us human. Thinking of some great loves I knew of in the past, it became a certainty that to lose the ability to love must be much worse than to lose being loved. You can survive not being loved, but to be unable to love would destroy all that is good about people. Love of family has all sorts of complications and traditions and obligations, but loving is freer than even that kind of love. Loving can be impossible and secret and vast. Children love many things: toys, animals, stories, their play and even imaginary friends. Youth can love a peer hero or an older adult or an icon singer or film star with a passion that is wholly unrealistic, one that can never be openly expressed but that exists powerfully. Some love a dream of fame or great fortune and find it encouraging in purpose and very satisfying even though it may never be accomplished. Their loving guides them. Others love spiritual beings: angels and saints, gods and spirits allowing them to commit their entire lifetimes to those loves. A few people love places in the world and yearn for them even though they will never actually be able to go there. Or perhaps once they have been there and have never stopped the love they have for it. During stressful times, they reminisce about being back there once again. Their memories are lovingly vivid. Loving can be a great force for pleasure, crime, kindness, achievement, destruction, evil and sacrifice. Loving represents a whole gamut of  results that are not always positive and are often used as an excuse for the worst kind of negative action such as insurrection, wars, persecution and other destructive events. Love of country, doctrines, religion, political position, royalty, power can cause major destructive forces to be borne. Love of places that please us, on the other hand, can maintain our sanity, sense of being, artistic delight, stimulate our imaginations to create in our minds, our own lands and safe places. Those who suffer in all other ways, have the loving embodied that gives them peaceful havens:  love of family, children, those close to them. Loving can't be taken: it stays inside  when all else has gone. The lowliest human on earth can love as much as can the greatest and most powerful. Love creates us equal. We all know it naturally and intimately and it bonds us because we all understand what it is and how valuable it is. How easy it is - to love.