Love

Love is one of those words (like ‘guardian’ from yesterday’s blog) which could easily be misunderstood. It’s over used today. It can have enough sickly, sweet overtones to prevent most of us from mentioning the word. But love isn’t quite everything anyway, surely? Life isn’t just a matter of showering love on everything we see. In our waking days we most of us have to be involved with the material world. We have to attend to needs like clothing, washing, looking after our gadgets and machines, etc. Love is a big emotion but it can involve the mundane too. Take the fridge; it does a lot for us and deserves to be loved. It keeps our food cool and our beer cold. The fridge and the computer and the car, they each deserve high regard. Our high-ideal lifestyles often show disrespect for things, and if we think of animals as mere ‘things’ that same attitude of disrespect is applied to them, especially when they’re a chief source of food. We’re good at ‘loving’ but not always consistent with it. It’s often completely absent in our attitude concerning cruelty to animals. Somehow we think it’s normal and therefore okay.