There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say, but you can learn
How to play the game
It’s easy.
Nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do, but you can learn
How to be you in time
It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.
There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where
You’re meant to be
It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.
~The Beatles
This month’s series is all about LOVE. Not just because of the impending Hallmark holiday but because really, what else matters?
Without love who are we? What do we have if not love? How do we reach our dreams without a lotta love?
Just as a newborn child will not survive without the love of a caregiver, neither will our dreams. They, too, are tiny, vulnerable specks inside of us that need an abundance of love and protection since they themselves can’t defend against dream crushers or dragons. We must coddle our dreams until they are viable on their own and even then, once they come to fruition, love is vital to ensure their existence.
I know as we trudge through adulthood we tend to get jaded. Lose heart. Lose faith in dreams and relationships gone by. But in order to live the life we’re meant to have we must stay true to our hearts and remind ourselves that in the end, love is all that really matters.
Love for self. Love for others. Love for the world.
Each one of us has an abundance of love to give and as I’ve found, the more you give the more you receive. So if you want to have an abundant life on all ends, start lovin’. If you want to change your life, start lovin’.
Because as Lennon and McCartney so eloquently state, there’s nothing you can do that can’t be done. All you need is love.
Photo courtesy of keepingyouwell.com
Ingrid Schaffenburg's Blog 
These three abide: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. You got it, Ingrid.
Yep! Agreed 🙂
Lovely!!!!!
Mom
Thanks Mama 🙂
One of the best songs of all time! Terrific post, Ingrid. Excited for this series!
🙂 Thanks August!
Hi Ingrid, Excellent observations! I have found that love is more important than life for I cannot live without love. Looking forward to reading more!
Amen to that! Life is certainly not worth living without love.
I’ve written in some detail about this subject, last Valentine’s Day, as a matter of fact.
It turned out not to be nearly as straightforward as I’d anticipated. Here, at the risk of boring you and your good readers to absolute tears, is some of what I wrote:
The Old High German — or OHG, as the lexicographers call it — luba and the Gothic lubō and the Latin lubēre — all (like the now-archaic lief) meant “pleasing” or “treasured” or “desirous” or “dear.” Even now, the German word liebling is directly related to lief and essentially means that same thing: “dear.”
The word agape, on the other hand, which is the Greek word from which charite ultimately derives, is in Latin caritas, meaning “To esteem highly.”
Caritas never really denoted what charity denotes today: namely, giving things away for free.
According to Oxford, caritas meant “Dearness, fondness, affection; love founded upon esteem.”
It was specifically contrasted with amor, a word with a distinctly physical connotation. Oxford goes on to define the original meaning of charite (as opposed to caritas) as “Benignity of disposition expressing itself in Christ-like conduct.”
The word caritas quickly passed out of the monasteries and the churches, where Latin was so frequently used, and into the then more common usage: cheritet or cherite — both deriving from the word cher, meaning “dear,” “dear one,” or “to hold dear.”
Indeed, also to this very day, the word “cherish” means exactly that.
In addition to all this, there was for the same Greek word another Latin word used in those first biblical translations: dilectio.
Like caritas, the word dilectio also meant “To esteem highly.”
Etymologically, this is all significant because later biblical translations, starting in the 16th century, began rendering dilectio as love, and caritas as charity; so that some of the very earliest bibles were already using “love” and “charity” interchangeably, just as the first translators had used caritas and dilectio interchangeably.
Gradually, as the decades and centuries passed and more and more translations were produced, the word love was increasingly substituted for the word charity, until by 1881, the Revised Edition of the King James had completely replaced charity with love. That of course is how it stands today.
Love, in other words, made caritas and dilectio into one.
Remember, though, that these words, as well as the Greek word agape from which they originated, all meant “Dearness, fondness, affection; to esteem highly.”
And yet (I wrote, last Valentine’s Day) if that’s the case, why are we still left feeling slightly unsatisfied about what, precisely, it all means?
Thomas Aquinas, as he so often does, offers some help:
Thomas Aquinas, like his teacher Aristotle, thought that the highest love was friendship. Both, however, believed that friendship was just a precursor to understanding the love that is, in Aquinas’s words, caritas (charity). One of the first questions Aquinas poses in his tract on charity is whether charity equals friendship. He answers this way:
In the fullest sense, love, charity, agape caritas, delictio — whatever you wish to term it — is not just another passing emotion: it’s a way of life.
And it will be a fricken miracle if I got all the coding for my italics right.
Wow. Very complex but profoundly simple. Thank you for this. How wonderful that charity and love were interchangeable at one time. And I love that you point out how the love of an object is different from the love of or for a friend. And I believe that love is a passing emotion but like charity, it’s an act. It’s a verb in it’s strongest sense. To feel love is great but to act in love, to love another, that’s where I choose to focus my time 😉 Feelings are so fickle that I learned a long time ago not to rely on them.
Beautiful post!
This is an informative and rather interesting synopsis. While love transcends passing emotion, is it not possible for emotional being to be renewed infinitely by continual acts of love? Love begets love. So, to act in love cultivates a constant inner awareness that leads to that outer way of life?
On a related note, referencing Aquinas also opens the window to a wider concept of love in the universe, or, love as the idea, substance and action of the universe that forms and permeates all existence. That might lead in a whole different direction though!
I completely agree. And love the idea of continually being renewed by love. I think that’s evident in all areas of nature. Like The Beatles said, all you need is love 😉
Hallmark holiday? Don’t tell me you’re a cynic 😉
We (my family) used to sing this song when we drove from Oxford to Wales (it took a long time, the journey, not the song). It always evokes that memory of traveling in a car, which by no ironic coincidence is filled with love. Nice topic Ingrid.
Cheers!
Every time you mention Oxford my heart goes pitter-patter. *sigh*
Nah… not a cynic 😉 In fact I’m quite the romantic just don’t like anything that’s overly-commercialized. Including my favorite holiday, Christmas. As we all know it’s all gotten out of hand.
I couldn’t agree more, Ingrid. In the end, it’s all about love. I’m looking forward to reading the series.
Thanks Fabio!
Hey Ingrid! I just popped over here from the beauty of a woman blogfest, and i love your blog/writing! And the idea of having a series on love during February? Genius! I look forward to following your posts! ~Liz
By the way… this is one of the greatest songs. Ever. 🙂
Totally agree!! And thank you 🙂 Wasn’t that a brilliant idea of August’s!? Love her!
Happy Valentine’s Day, Ingrid.
Happy Valentines to you too!!