Too Much Love?

All You Need is Love. Love Makes the World Go Round. Love is a Many Splendored Thing. Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry. True Love Ways.  Crazy Little Thing Called Love.  Even… Love Shack!

Yes. Love is all around us. Its virtues are extolled in song and film.  We all know how important love is. But I wonder, is there such a thing as too much love? The Buddha famously said that desire is the cause of all suffering.  Are desire and love the same thing? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.

I remember 1976 when my daughter, Amy, was in Kindergarten. She was so excited to see her friends at the bus stop in the morning that she would hug them so tightly they would try to get free. She loved them and that is how she showed it. But for them, it was too much love.

There are other types of love. Some people love food. Some people love their jobs. Some people love naps!

Can you love food too much?  Of course! Too much Breyer’s Vanilla can cause high cholesterol. Too many carbohydrates can cause diabetes. Too many nuts and seeds can cause diverticulitis.

How about your job? Those who love their job too much can spend too little time with their families.  Loving work too much means missing your kids’ school activities. They can work and work and work and at retirement they don’t know what to do with themselves.

Naps?  If you love naps too much you may waste much of your day. You may find it hard to sleep at night. You may never clean your house! I kid…I love naps!

But bringing it back to romantic love, is it possible for there to be too much of that?  Hard to imagine, but yes.  Unrequited love, love that is not returned, is too much.  Some people pine their lives away, because they have too much love in their heart.  Too much love, that is not reciprocal, can cause depression and worse.  Too much unrequited love has its songs too:  I Can’t Make You Love Me. Sitting, Waiting, Wishing. Something I Can Never Have. You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away.

So, I think I answered my own question in the title. Maybe the Beatles song, “It’s Only Love” is the way to think about it!

How was that for going a little deeper?