In love with love
by Bob on July 27, 2007
Being in love is one thing. That is, being in love with a person. And it can be very beautiful and life-changing and magical. It makes life worth living.
Being in love with love is more complicated. Some people are in this situation. It hardly matters who the end person is in their relationship, as long as there is a loving relationship present. They love love. It's kind of a 1960s thing, with some more urgent psychological implications and overtones.
For one wonders, if someone is just in love with being in love, then the other person in the relationship is removed from the human equation, and is inter-changeable and modular, can be replaced by anyone else, and the interpersonal seemingly loving relationship is actually fragile.
Some people just want to be in an eternal state of love, which is really a lofty goal, and couldn't care less who they might be in love with at any particular moment.
This is all very subtle. Someone who is in love with another person is demonstrably moved and full of emotions directly related to the loved one. In this latter case of someone's loving love, this interaction is very cloudy.
So in the late 1960s flower generation we had everybody loving everybody. "Everybody's beautiful" as the song went. 1967, the summer of love. Wear flowers in you hair and head for San Francisco and the Monterey Pop Festival in California. It's likely a dilution of true love. Like pouring a gallon of water into a cup of strong tea. But people lived it out that way in the 1960s. The so called "hippie" generation and its magical moment being the Woodstock Festival in 1969. Well, that was all cool at the time. But it engendered the mid-1970s with non-committal and casual relationships, and designer jeans of all things. Jeans were the common person's clothing in the 1960s. But by disco time in the 1970s they were expensive, tight-fitting, and had a named designer label on them. That would have all been an anathema in the flowery 1960s. But it was seemingly an implosion from the 1960s. So it went even further in the 1980s. The "Me" generation.
Being in love with love can be good for holy people and spiritual people and monks. And politicians, maybe. But for the common man and woman, it is hardly a strong bond for a relationship.
So one should try to ask oneself if they are in love with the person or just in love with love itself. Therein is a profound difference.
We have to end with a song. There are so many love songs, one is baffled which one to choose. So I think. No Google-ing or search engines allowed. What comes to mind as relevant ? I guess two songs. "Do You Believe in Magic" by The Lovin' Spoonful, to teach us about the magical aspects of true love, and the 1967 song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)" sung by Scott McKenzie which was the anthem of the late 1960s. The song was actually written by John Phillips of The Mamas and The Papas. John had his finger on the new generation back then and the song shows it.
Would that it would have been the Age of Aquarius as the song by that name went by The Fifth Dimension in 1969, and as the soothsayers said. But it didn't quite turn out that way. Must have had something to do with Human Nature, the Human Condition, Money, and what Plato wrote into the myth of the Ring of Gyges in his Republic. It's immortal in its implications. Have a read of it sometime.
The Mamas and the Papas. They were brilliant.
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San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)
By Scott McKenzie, 1967. Written by John Phillips.
If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there
For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair
All across the nation such a strange vibration
People in motion
There's a whole generation with a new explanation
People in motion people in motion
For those who come to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there