What’s love got to do w/ it?

I love roasted Brussels sprouts. I love my children. I love waking up in a tent. I love the poetry of Mary Oliver. I love the rain. I love making lists. I love the smell of the forest. I love this new app. I love happy hours with Louise. I love my Teva sandals.

 What an overused, ever-expandable, deeply meaningful, sometimes meaningless, frivolous, gut-wrenching, whispered, shouted, miraculous disaster of a word.

 Love.

 We use the word to mean everything from a passing fancy to a life-time devotion, from sex to sacrifice, from family to friends to felines.

 Love can be romantic, platonic, patriotic, communitarian, familial. Divine. Mundane. Love of God. Love of Chicago-style pizza. We look for it. We find it. Or it finds us. We lose it. We find it again. We celebrate it. We regret it. We mourn it.

 Conditional, unconditional, everlasting, fleeting, euphoric, painful…weaponized. Love can heal. Love can wound. It can be, in Cheryl Strayed words: “imbued by sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor.”

 And yet, it defies definition. Because, although universal, it is also spectacularly specific and peculiarly particular. Each painter, each poet, each songwriter, each chef, each gardener, each child, each parent, each of us has our own experience: Who we love, what we love, how we love, why we love. This is what makes us who we are.

 Love in the Time of COVID provided great stress and great insights. During these past few years, we discovered or rediscovered the importance of connection, of emotional attachment, of physical intimacy…because we were deprived of it. We had to put certain kinds of love on hold. We created protective “pods” with nearby loved ones, insulating ourselves from others. Zoom substituted for human contact with distant loved ones. Although, of course, it was no substitute. But we tried. We loved our animal companions. We loved baking sourdough bread.

 And we waited.

 And now we are ready. We are hungry to love again. There is an urgency to it. There has emerged, from this dark and scary time, a recommitment to love one another, to care for one another, to actively work to create love and respect in this confusing time of incivility and unrest.

 Because, without love we are flattened and defeated. Without love we are hollow. Without love we are not human.

This is an excerpt from a speech I gave at Fortnightly Club on Oct. 19.