What Is Love?
Last Tuesday, Melissa Mulder, a Pennsylvania kindergarten teacher, took her class beyond the normal elementary schoolroom Valentine’s Day card swap.
She brought each student into the hall one by one and asked, “What is love?”
According to her, many of the students “shrugged their shoulders,” “shuffled,” “stared dumbfounded,” and nearly all of them “struggled to define love without using the actual word.”
No big surprise, right? It’s a tough question for a kindergartner. For anyone.
Love.
What is love?
"Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love, cannot be killed or swept aside." That’s what Lin-Manuel Miranda memorably, passionately said at the Tony Awards last year.
“All you need is love,” the Beatles told us.
Plato called love “a serious mental disease.”
“Love is a battlefield,” according to Pat Benatar.
Here at Cymplify, love made it into our seven core values.
Why? What do we know about love that a class of kindergartners, Plato, or Pat Benatar don’t?
Nothing, really. Like the experts, we’re no experts. But, we do have our own take, from a life-cymplifying point of view.
So, this being February and all, here’s how we define LOVE as a core value—a key life principle—that we keep at the forefront of our minds and actions:
We believe in having a good time doing meaningful stuff. Try to deeply enjoy what you do and who you do it with. You look much better when you glow.
Simple. Semi-vague. Maybe a bit sophomoric.
We could try to explain what this vision of love means to us, but we LOVE the idea of you bothering to think about it and grappling with your own take on love.
Tell us what you think love is. Just a paragraph or two. A line or two. A story, a poem, a memory, a weird thought.
Get it to us (via comment or email) by February 28, and you’ll be entered to win a FREE Change Your Mind book, Cymple Songs Vol I cd, and a Ken Block bobblehead. All for putting a thoughtful moment into love. Note: We might share your thoughts with the world! (Oh, and don't forget to share the love and share this post.)
Here’s a cymple "fortune-cookie" sample from one of the (ineligible) Cymplify team, love it or not:
You can conquer every corner of a secure room, but risk opening the doors and windows to fully inhabit it. That is love.
Take that, Benatar!
(P.S. Love your stuff.)
