Let me not to the marriage of true minds…

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
—William Shakespeare

True love standing firm against time’s ravages – what a fine and noble view of love this is!

But erroneous. This is a poem so often read out at weddings, to urge the two “true minds” to love forever, though rosey lips and youth’s beauty may fade, until the Grim Reaper, with his bending sickle, should break the bond.

What rubbish! Love endures beyond all that. Love is more than the feelings of two people for each other. Love is the unfailing mark; the mariner of life’s passage may set his course by love and need no other compass for his barque.

Love is not owned by any person, nor by any two people. Love is not broken by death. Love is eternal. Love is beauty. Love is all you need.

Love is more than romantic love. Love is the feeling of a mother for her child. Love is the way we regard life, and beauty, and truth. Love is the bond of affection between friends. Love is what ends conflict, overcomes enmity, makes a handshake more than a touch.

Love is always there for us to find, to draw upon, to drink from without limit. It is boundless. What two lovers feel for each other is love, true enough, but that mutual affection is not the limit of love. There is far more than that.

And far less. Love is not passion or lust, though one may mistake either. Love is always there for us to lift our hearts, to sparkle our eyes, to forgive every wrong and to make everything beautiful.

Love needs no explanation, is what I’m trying to say. You know exactly what it is. When you love a work of art, a bird soaring, the beauty of a sunrise or the truth of a poem, you know it without having to think about it.

Have I reached you? Has Shakespeare touched you? Can you, dear reader, feel the union of true minds between we three?

—Guy Sez