Italy Holiday Day 05: Love is Real

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t know if I’m any good at love, but today I had some kind of epiphany and I realised that love is in fact real. Not going to go into any detail, but the trigger was hanging out with and observing this elderly couple from Austria who live in Switzerland (by the Bodensee!). She was already a pensioner (and thus probably just over 65), and he’s going to retire next year (which makes him a year or so younger).

These guys looked like they had been married for absolutely ages, and contrary to the usual old/long-term couples who tend often to just stay together for the sake of it (I haven’t yet met any genuinely happy old, long-term i.e. lifetime couples) they just were the best of friends and really affectionate/comfortable/friendly with each other and completely in tune. For contrast, my friend K’s parents have been together for donkey’s years too, but whenever I see them together they are just acting out their roles – she is far more switched on than him, and ‘performs’ whatever is required but there is no genuine connection or wavelength between them. They are not in tune at all (though he probably doesn’t realise it).

Maybe I’m just too perceptive of these things. But I was genuinely in awe at this old couple. They were holding hands and he was cuddling her from behind etc., and it wasn’t a physical type of thing but more a means of connecting. These guys were so obviously happy with each other, and so obviously equal and accepting of one another.

I’ve thus come to the conclusion that, despite my cynicism and general disbelief in ‘love’ (see also Luhmann’s Liebe als Passion), it might in fact exist. I’m not talking about sex or passion here – I’m talking about a kind of love where you are in tune with the other person and where you therefore don’t have to work so fucking hard at it! BTW check out Wikipedia Germany’s entry on Liebe. I just love German Wikipedia – it seems to be so much more sophisticated than the English one! Might just be a language thing – German just reads far FAR better

Either way. Love is Real.