Thoughts on the word “Love” for Valentine’s
A few weeks ago I was invited to dim sum lunch by a book
club group. They were very intelligent and thoughts and ideas flew around the
table. One of the group mentioned a
movie he had just seen about a man who had fallen in love with a machine.
Apparently the machine and he had had a complex interacting relationship over a
long and intensive time. I didn’t catch the nature of the machine but knew it
wasn’t the obvious- a robot. The discussion branching out from this developed
into whether or not one can have a love relationship with an inanimate subject
like a machine. This became quite animated as examples were brought up. The
computer with its ability to start a love hate relationship was brought up and
of course the intense interaction between it and us in the highly competitive computer
games we are all indulging in. Everyone decided that it would be terrible to
lose the computer, and it would be badly missed and surely that was love. Also,
one could love intensely an object; for example that special letter opener one
bought in an exotic place -my personal love object. We all know the despair of
having to throw out that beloved pair of perfect jeans mourning its demise, to
say nothing of having to throw out the perfect white cotton T-shirt bought in Turkey in 1975.
Examples of love flew around the table until I interrupted with “But does love
of these things break your heart?” To my surprise a charming woman said “Oh yes
–my first car. When it died I was heartbroken, we had had a tense ten year
relationship, and she was so difficult always breaking down and gave me such a
hard time” She looked quite wistful as she said “ I just loved that car.” So I became somewhat
convinced and imagined our favourite god the cute naked little winged boy
perched on a cloud with his bow and arrow looking down at someone in the
process of buying a new car and aiming the arrow straight at the buyer’s heart.
I refuse to believe he chooses to aim at the heart of the car! Evidently the
outcome of the movie, sadly, was that the machine refused the heartbroken man’s
advances proving again that machines have more intelligence than humans who are
so careless with their hearts as to fall into that
lovelorn pit- or are they? And aren’t we lucky to be able to do so-- Happy
Valentine’s day
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