The title of this essay,
Love Means Nothing,
doesn't refer to the tennis use of "love" as
nothing, as in "Federer is ahead forty love" (in
plain English, Federer is up forty to zip in this set). That use of
"love" as nothing comes from "l'oeuf",
the French word for egg because the ovoid shape of an egg resembles a
zero ie nothing.
Another use of "love" as nothing comes from
the English phrase for neither love nor
money:
"You won't get me up in an airplane - for neither love nor
money"
(in other words, "No Way José!").
Neither is
Love Means Nothing
trivializing or deriding love. To be sure, the phrase it "means
nothing" can be trivializing and deriding, as in "It means
nothing to me people are starving as long as I've got enough
to eat.". The "means nothing" in
Love Means Nothing
isn't trivializing or deriding love - just the opposite, in fact.
Interimly the implication of
Love Means Nothing
is it leaves the significance out of love, allowing love
to be - natural, unencumbered, and easy. Ultimately the
implication of
Love Means Nothing
is it assigns nothing to love so love can allow people and
things to be - natural, unencumbered, and easy. This
allowing people and things to be as they are (as
Werner Erhard may have
said)
is the only worthwhile definition of love I can think of.
If you love me, that is if you say you love me, then I
want you to be with me in what I suppose could be considered a most
unusual way: I want you to be with me by leaving me alone. I
want you to let me be who I'm being. I want you to accept me being who
I'm being because not only is that who I'm being but also because it's
my intention to be who I'm being. If you say you love me, you'll leave
me alone to be who I'm being, and in that way you'll know the
authentic ecstatic intimacy that's only possible between two human
beings who grant each other the space to be who they really are.
If you leave me alone in this way, if you let me be, then I can
... be ... my ...
Self
... with you. And if there's any one thing you can do that's guaranteed
100% certain to make you very, very attractive to me and
to raise my love for you, it's to let me be my Self with
you. When you grant me that space, when you allow me to be who I am
without trying to change me (although you may support me changing if
I want to change), I can instantly
be love with you.
Notice I didn't say I can instantly be in love with
you. That's fraught with waaay too many concepts, too many
beliefs, and too many naïve storybook expectations to capture my
interest. I said I can instantly
be love with
you.
That's because you, being your Self, granting me the space
to be my Self, allows me, being my Self, to grant you the
space to be your Self. This is what love really is. And what it
takes to bring real love forth is nothing. It's already here.
We're already who we are. There's nothing to do.
That's what it takes: nothing! Love means nothing.