Too Much Love

Loving one another is OK – but let’s not overdo it.

Can there be too much love? We’ve all heard of “smother love” – a kind of emotional swaddling that comes near to stifling the object of affection – particularly associated with over-protective parents. Some people are surprised to hear that my own parents, when I was no older than 15, allowed me to go off hitchhiking, with a friend, or often alone – at first, around my home country of the British Isles, then on The Continent, the mainland of Europe.

Did my parents not care enough about my safety and welfare? In fact, I never asked them. (I think it was that I was a rebellious teen, and they knew I’d go, whether or not with their permission.) I did send home a postcard every day, from wherever I happened to be. (In those days, picture postcards were still quite common. A small rack of local scenes could usually be found in many kinds of stores.) And on special occasions, such as their anniversary, I splurged on a telegram, getting the lowest rate for the least words. 

But, whether or not it was sheer luck, in all those years of adventurous travel, I never encountered any serious trouble. Possibly the worst event occurred when I was arrested in the heart of Madrid for what was then the crime of wearing shorts in a public place. (It was still the Franco era, and the Spanish government was quite conservative.) I had no long pants with me, and hardly any money, and had to resort to calling the British Embassy, who responded by sending over a uniformed chauffeur, with someone’s old trousers draped over his arm.

But in general, what I learned was that it was only the kindest people who picked up hitchhikers. The Second World War had been over for less than half a decade, and there were still ruins to be seen in many places. But I encountered no animosity from former enemies. There was a sort of brotherhood with my fellow “travelers by thumb.” And our code of conduct included the rule that whoever reached a good hitchhiking spot first had first claim on it, until they got a ride, while anyone else who came along was obliged to keep walking on past, so as not to spoil the first arriver’s chances.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I never had children of my own, on whom to demonstrate how much concern I had, or did not have, for their safety. Since those youthful days, however, conditions have changed, making the world more dangerous in some ways, but in others less so. The very fact that, statistically and medically speaking, people are, in general, living longer and healthier lives would seem to indicate that, overall, this has become a much safer world (apart from that other fact that the mortality rate is still 100%).

But it seems we are still quite a long way from a world in which there is too much love. Perhaps an acme was reached (or a nadir, depending on your point of view) during the now legendary Summer of Love of 1967, as symbolized in San Francisco by the young people who stuck flowers into the barrels of rifles pointed at them by troops called in to suppress what was seen as a wave of anti-Vietnam War rioting.

But, if the concept of excessive love is almost too ridiculous, the idea of a surplus of evil is nearly as hard to equate with reality. The truth is that things even out. Bad people are capable of doing good things. They can indeed sometimes reform, to the extent of turning over a new leaf (which reminds me that, as a child, that expression made me picture people going out among fallen leaves, and turning them over. Of course, I didn’t know then that a “leaf” could also be a page in a book).

Our literature is full of stories of lovers like Shakespeare’s Othello who, after jealously murdering his blameless wife, Desdemona, pleads that he “loved not wisely, but too well.” And of course, Romeo and Juliet, whose love also led to tragedy. But let me give the last word on this subject of excessive love to an exhausted-sounding Lord Byron, concluding his poem, “We’ll Go No More A-Roving”:

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And Love itself have rest.