True Love is a Redundancy

In English there is only one word for love. Some say this is an injustice. “I love you, man!” or “I love pizza,” or “I love you” each mean different things. But I think they mean the same thing. Maybe we only have one word for love because being in love with everything is really so much better than being in love with anything. Think about it: is the feeling you get when you sink your teeth into that crispy-gooey pizza slice really all that different than the goosebumps you get when you think about your high school crush? Is the overwhelming melancholy of gazing at the sun drifting downward toward the horizon really so far away from the sadness that can fill your heart when you realize that a love you've spent so much time growing has numbered days?

This Valentine's day, let's remember that maybe it's OK to be in love with that guy you see at the bus stop only on Monday, or that barista who always smiles back. And maybe you can fall madly in love with a font or a color or a sky, and that's just as true. Come to think of it, isn't anything we see or hope or know with our whole heart really just as true as love?

This poem by E.E. Cummings sums up my feelings well (as many poems by E.E. Cummings do):

this man's heart 

is true to his

earth;so

anyone's world

does 

-n't interest him(by the 

look

feel taste smell

& sound

of a silence who can 

guess 

ex-

actly

what life

will do)loves 

nothing 

as much as

how(first

the arri

-v- 

in 

-g)a snowflake twi-

sts

,on

its way to now 

-here