All you need is love

Winter is back. Just when it looked like we could put our Kanuk coats away, the wind picked up, the temperature dropped, and it started snowing again. I hate winter. Well, I hate this winter. It has been so long and so cold and so unrelentingly consistent that even I entertain the notion of living in a more southerly climate. Last night I was talking to a young woman from Columbia who was telling me that the average temperature of Bogot� is springlike by our standards. It seems so nice at this point. But then, I have grown up in this temperate zone, with its incredibly cold winters and scorchingly hot summers, relieved by beautiful Mays and Septembers, and I would miss the change of seasons, the snowdrops and crocuses defying winter�s worst and rising anew every spring, and the gorgeous colours the leaves turn each fall. I guess nothing is without its price.

Also, this young woman was telling me that since she has been living in Canada (three years), she has become accustomed to our open and tolerant society, especially as it relates to the treatment of homosexuals. We got into quite the discussion about it. In Columbia, homosexuality is suppressed to the max. Apparently it has less to do with the country being controlled by the Catholic church and more with the cultural image of macho manhood. She said many people live double lives and are unhappy. She much prefers seeing men holding hands as they stroll down St-Denis street in Montreal.

I agree with her. I am appalled by my neighbour-to-the-south�s attempt to legislate away the rights of homosexuals and lesbians, when my own government is working on enshrining them in our constitution. When all is said and done, after the arguments about social security and succession rights, etc., what it comes down to is letting people love whom they will. It took me a while to get over an innate squeamishness regarding homosexual practices, but having that out of the way allows me to regard same-sex relationships as just as valid as my own heterosexual one. In this world where there is so much misery of so many kinds, at least allow people to love without fear of reprisal.

A couple of years ago I went out for lunch with our 10-month sessional appointee to the local Indian restaurant for its Friday-noon buffet. We overheard the people at the table next to us talking as they were leaving, and one of the phrases that came up was �the meaning of life�. My colleague turned to me and said, �So, Elgan, what is the meaning of life?� I took a moment to think about it, and then answered, �Love. We are either always looking for it, or trying to nurture it. When we don�t have it we are unhappy, and when we do we can overlook many other discomforts.� (This is a paraphrase. I don�t think I was quite so articulate with my mouth full of curried lentils.) My lunch partner rubbed his chin, nodded sagely, and said little. After all, he was a single, 35-year-old man with no prospects, painfully shy, and (I believe) feeling his loneliness acutely. Otherwise, why would he go out to lunch with me?

And yet often, when we do have love, we worry at it like a scab. It isn�t enough just to be happy that we love and are loved. Jealousy rears its ugly head and grins at us lasciviously, making us think that our love is only temporary and can be snatched from us at any moment. I know because I�ve been there and done that all too many times. Before I started dating the man whom I subsequently married, I had so many boyfriends with whom I was always madly in love, and who all left me because I was so clingy and desperate to hold onto them. When I started dating Hubby, I had gone through so much of the other that I made up my mind that �this was for a good time, not a long time�, and it has become a long time. Now neither of us can imagine our life without the other. And that�s the way it should be.

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