Love is what we live for

Love. Amour. Люблю.

Ah, love, the feeling that makes people do crazy things. Have you ever been in love? No, I don’t mean like how you fell in love with a place or a house. I mean romantic love. Of course you’ve been in love! Remember that nanny you had a crush on when you were little? What about the buffed up neighbor next door who was like two grades above you? It might not have been a situation like these two but I know that you have such a memory. Dig it up. That’s it. That nostalgic feeling is what I want. Do you feel that glowing warmth in your heart? That’s what I want. Go on. I’ll give you a moment to reminisce. Walk with me now.

Ever since we were born, love has been part of us. Some people say that a man’s first girlfriend is his mother. I’m not sure about how that works but we all know that little boys are very protective of their mothers. Same case applies to daughters and fathers. This has been named as the Oedipus complex.

So where did love come from? Over the ages there have been numerous myths and stories of how love came to be. My favorite so far comes from the Symposium by Plato. I will spare you the ‘ thee’s and ‘ thou’s and summarize it for you. The story goes that once there was a guy (I won’t bother you with so many Greek names) who was a playwright and had made a huge achievement the previous night during a dramatic festival. In order to celebrate his achievement, he threw a party which was attended by several important people including Socrates, who by the way got late because he “ got lost in thought” on some person’s porch. Yeah right. Anyway, during the party they somehow decided that they should all give speeches praising Eros – the god of love. I’m guessing that they played beer pong too and told stories of how some girl had had seven minutes in heaven in the closet with Zeus. History is not quite clear on that part so we’ll go with my version.

Several boring philosophical speeches later they got to the good part: The Myth of Aristophanes. Basically, Aristophanes said that once upon a time there were three kinds of humans. There were males, females and the androgynous. These creatures were round, had four hands and four legs and two complete faces facing opposite directions. It turned out that these fellows tried to overthrow the gods so they were punished by being split in half. Ever since then, people have been running around trying to find their other halves in order to restore their true nature. Women who were split from women looked for their partners, thus creating lesbians. Men split from men made homosexual couples. Women split from men made heterosexual couples. Intriguing, right? That’s not even the best part. When these halves found their partners again, they wrapped around each other so tight and wouldn’t let go. Pretty soon they were dying of and self-neglect. So what did Zeus do? He moved their genitals to the front so that, you know. Bow chicka wow wow. I won’t be offended if you bookmark this for later so that you can go uhm, thank Zeus. The whole night. Morning glory too? No worries. Try the back door then yell “ the south will rise again!” I will not be liable for any negative effects that result from your actions, which may include but not limited to: being slapped, exile to the couch etc.

Being a romantic will give you lots of memories to brag about to your grandchildren. I have heard about the old-young relationships in Cuba and how they are either going to succeed or are doomed fail but who cares? Follow your heart. Tourists flock to Cuba looking for love. Ask Joaquin Perez who married a 28-year-old while he was 71. I know that she stole his car and stuff several months later but come on! Love, right? Madness at its best. I wonder what he told his grandchildren when they asked him where their inheritance went. The medieval times were an era where love was so important that it had rules. Ask Frenchman Andreas Capellanus. I am deigned to be skeptical about these rules. Do I really have to “ turn pale in the presence of my beloved”? What if I’m actually chocking?

So many love stories revolved around this era. From the story of a 20-year-old prince from Portugal who had his lover’s body exhumed and placed on the throne next to him when he became king to the French tale of the affair of The Lady of Fayel whose husband fed her the cooked heart of her lover. They really should do an episode of Family Guy on this. While people were busy feeding each other hearts in Europe, Russians were all about business. Catherine the Great is thought to have helped in overthrowing and killing her husband, Czar Peter III, while having an affair with Grigory Potemkin, a soldier who was her guard. Days later, Catherine became empress. She made Potemkin a statesman, a count and the leader of her army. Why does it always have to be the guard who steals the wife? Learn from history. Fire that handsome guard. Wait, fire all of them. Grigory wasn’t handsome.

Now let’s come back to the modern world where love, as always, is complicated. Some feign it so as to marry into wealth, others do fall in true love while others still prefer to be single. Thousands of movies and series later, love is still the strongest theme. Imagine you and your partner in London riding on a big red bus while the police zoom by sipping tea. At least that’s what the animation Minions taught me. But really, London is a good place to visit and live in. With its huge cultural diversity, you have a better chance of actually meeting your other half probably in a pub or at the park. You can then go out to the movies, operas, visit really old buildings and even go for walks while hoping to meet royals. The list is endless.

With all that is going on in our lives we usually forget what we should be living for: love. Love is what we live for. Do you still have that warm glowing feeling you had at the beginning of this article? Good. Go make your significant other feel the same way.