Love.
I didn't overly question this word until I began a module entitled Shakespeare: Shadow and Substance earlier this semester. And now I'm hooked. I'm hooked on love. According to Plato love is a hell of a lot more complicated than we give it credit for, and to be honest I think we all know that.
Love is splashed across billboards, magazines, adverts for M&S desserts to H&M dresses: don't we just love them. We can love an artist, love a film, love a pizza topic. We can love family, love friends, love a lover. But Plato desires us to love beauty, to love a kind of elevated love that exists in some kind of spiritual plain. Well Plato, this post is NOT for you, old man, 'cause this post is dedicated to love of a certain person who I could not imagine a life without.
This person makes me smile just thinking about them. According to Plato, when a lover is in love with their beloved they see them everywhere they turn. I guess Plato got that one right. I see the one I love everywhere. I see them in sport, I see them in films, I see them in the sunshine and blue skies and I see them in the green green grass. I hear them in songs. I smell them when a complete stranger walks past.
Love is odd. It can take over entirely. Plato believed that love led to madness. That's pretty scary. But sometimes, that madness is worth it if you get to spend just a moment in their company. Because in that one moment, I believe that Plato may actually be talking sense. In that one moment you leave the cave and enter the light. In that one moment you actually taste, see, hear and smell beauty. Not human beauty but true beauty. As Erasmus described it, one can "foretaste" some kind of heaven.
Yet, Erasmus discussed love and madness in a work which he entitled "Praise of Folly". Perhaps love is folly! Perhaps the lover is simply a fool. If that is so then I will assume that said title.
All the best,
A Fool (for Love)
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