Love stories. They are filled with tragedy, joy and all the emotions you can fit in a novel, a three-minute ballad, or a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter. Love is depicted in many ways, but the question of what love is has never really gone away. In the sci-fi film The Fifth Element, the plot’s central claim is that love is (SPOILER ALERT) the fifth element, and the one thing that can save the world from alien annihilation.
So, what is love?
Like treasure hunters pursuing the Holy Grail, the quest for the one true answer is seemingly just as puzzling.
One man may have found it. His name is Robert Joseph Greene.
Robert Joseph Greene (born January 11, 1973) is a Canadian author of gay romance fiction, best known for The Gay Icon Classics of the World, a collection of gay-themed love stories from over 12 different countries. Each story represents a culture and a people. The book was listed by PFLAG Canada as a recommended book in their "Books Worth Reading" section. One of the short stories in the Gay Icon Classics collection is "Halo's Golden Circle", a tragic love story set in ancient Judea. Author and Jewish scholar Steven Greenberg remarked that it was a "beautiful story". Greene is cousin to American Jazz vocalist Carmen McRae. (Source: Wikipedia)
(Photo source: Wikipedia Commons / background and text added)
What is Love? Don’t ask Romeo, and especially Juliet. You won’t live past the age of 13.
Who to ask?
Robert Joseph Greene.
He will teach you about love, one that is not defined by relationships and measured by heartache, but one where love is never to blame. A love, when housed in the right place, is no longer dangerous and unstable, but instead free and selfless.
And he begins by asking three key questions:
What is the opposite of love?
What is the greatest test of love?
And of course, the most curious of all: What is love?
In order to find the answers, take out your pen and blank sheet of paper. Draw a line down the middle, and on each side of that line, write “Soul” on the left and “Psyche” to the right. Your journey will begin here.
After watching Robert Joseph Greene’s talk on How to Teach Love, take a look at the following montage, the opening sequence to the film Love Actually. Hopefully it provides just even a small reminder that love, is indeed, everywhere. Because the world right now can use more of it, and not to save us from alien annihilation, but from our own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUoxXpqof8A
As the Dalai Lama tweeted recently:
“Scientists declare that it’s human nature to be compassionate. All living beings who experience feelings of pleasure and pain ultimately survive as a result of love and compassion. If we human beings help each other, serve each other, with compassion, we’ll be happy.”