There is something to be said for finding people with whom you can share your whole heart. Those people in whom you believe you've found your heart's equal, its match. Love can help you to see colors you hadn't seen before. Can bring the light back into your days. Love can show you the very best parts of you. Love can take better care of you than you can take care of you.
On this rainy Monday, I wanted to take a moment to remember the love that fills my heart and my days. It's in my morning cup of coffee, in hundreds of text messages from the most far-flung corners of the country, it sits on my chest and purrs to me, it breathes next to me in my bed. Love can be so easily forgotten, taken for granted, but isn't it also true that love can save the world?
Among the most recognizable images of art's long history–among the Mona Lisa, the Balloon Dog, Starry Nights–is Robert Indiana's monumental LOVE sculpture. My experience of it has been both in New York on one of the city's busiest corners and in Middlebury, Vermont where it sits by a pond and contemplates its reflection. Two more diametrically different locations could not be found, yet the message remains as impactful no matter where the piece is. In Middlebury, the piece helps to remind that love is real and tangible, a force larger than man, weightier than despair. In New York, a city alternately described as "oppressed", "frantic", "lonely" and "unforgettable", "intoxicating", "magical", Indiana's LOVE, again stands to remind those who pass to pause, take a moment to breathe, and remember to love. "Remember!" it urges us.
"Remember!"