Love, By Any Other Name
Who doesn’t love Valentine’s Day? Come on! It’s the beginning of the end of the Winter months, at least in Texas. It’s another opportunity to say “I love you” to the person of your dreams, and yes, it’s a chance to spend a chunk of money on lots of red and pink stuff.
In addition to your sweetheart, there are other beneficiaries of Valentine’s as well. It’s well-documented that around 150 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually, so Hallmark is happy. Conversation Hearts, the little sweet candy with inscriptions, are sold by the billions. That’s billions, with a “b”. Someone actually did the math behind how many of these little heart-shaped rocks of pure sugar are sold each year, and calculated that if laid end-to-end, a “Conversation Heart Highway” would stretch from Valentine Texas (yes, there is such a place) to Rome Italy, and back again! On a related topic, I’m certain the American Dental Association is enamored with Valentine’s Day as well.
How did Valentine’s Day originate, you might ask? While the story is a bit cloudy, supposedly it dates back St. Valentinus, a Catholic priest who was martyred in the third century in Rome. Apparently, Valentinus continued to preside over the marriages of young soldiers in secret, to the chagrin of the resident Roman Emporor who had previously outlawed marriage, rationalizing that single men made better soldiers than those who were married.
Valentine’s Day is a celebration of that sometimes fleeting emotion, love. In Ancient Greece, there were four words in the lexicon that described love. This may seem like overkill, but remember that the Eskimos have 20 words to describe different types of snow, so at least the Greeks were a little bit more efficient. The Greek word Eros is the word for love that most of us associate with Valentine’s love. Eros was used to express the love or feelings that are shared between two people that are attracted to each other. In fact, Eros was the name of the Greek god of love, which the Romans called “Cupid”.
In Ancient Greece, there were four words in the lexicon that described love.
The Greeks had another term for love, called Agape. But more on that later. In the meantime, let me tell you a bit about how my wife Carol celebrates Valentine’s Day, because more than any other holiday, it probably was responsible for my marriage proposal to her. It was Valentine’s Day not long after we met in 1983 that sealed the deal for me.
That first year, while we were still dating, Carol met me on campus at the University of Texas where we were both students, on Valentine’s morning, and presented me with an enormous, beautiful homemade cheesecake. Although only 18 years old, Carol knew well even at that young age that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach! This cheesecake concoction was probably six inches deep, composed mainly of gooey, creamy and delicious filling, probably a full foot in diameter, and was smothered in a sweet bright-red cherry sauce and strawberries. This masterpiece could have easily adorned the cover of a Southern Living magazine!
What Carol didn’t know is that up until that point, I had this sort of innocent naivete about cheesecake. I mean, I really didn’t know exactly what one was. I liked cheese. I liked cake, but I couldn’t imagine anything that I thought contained both. To my surprise, after trying it, I was hooked. On the cheesecake, and on Carol.
Every year thereafter, both before and after we got married, even today (35 years later), Carol makes me a homemade cheesecake on Valentine’s Day, and I love her dearly for it.
But there is another dimension to this story. What I want to convey to you is the effort, what Carol calls her “labor of love”, that goes into making me that cheesecake every year. That beautiful cake, that work of art, takes her hours to make. For all these years, she could have easily gone to the store or to the local bakery and purchased a store-bought cheesecake, and I would have still been hopelessly enamored with her. But she is principled in a strange sort of way; she would never do that. When she was in college, she would put her class schedule and her mid-term exams aside to show me her love through that cheesecake. When we were young parents, she would make me that cheesecake with a baby on her hip, and toddlers rambling around in the kitchen under her feet. When we were both professionals climbing the corporate ladder, Carol would make me that cheesecake in her business attire with the telephone ringing and her bosses beckoning. And these days, as she readies herself to feed and clothe her community’s hungry and downtrodden, she will bless me with that homemade cheesecake.
When we were young parents, she would make me that cheesecake with a baby on her hip, and toddlers rambling around in the kitchen under her feet.
Which brings me back to the “other love” described by the ancient Greeks. Agape love. Agape love is known to be a “self-sacrificing” love. This is the kind of love that requires action. It’s the kind of love that requires selflessness and sacrifice. It’s the kind of love that requires willpower, and not simply emotion. Agape love is the kind of love that I believe Mother Teresa was describing when she said “Not all of us can do great things. But we all can do small things with great love.”
Agape love is known to be a “self-sacrificing” love. This is the kind of love that requires action.
It has taken me a lifetime to really understand this definition of love, this Agape Love. But through a life partner’s sacrifice on Valentine’s Day, and a gooey strawberry cheesecake, I think I’m starting to understand.
Happy Valentines Day.
Let’s Embrace The Grace, together.
It’s All Good.
