“A word is dead when it is said, some say.
I say it just begins to live that day.”
(Emily Dickinson, 1830–1886)
Some say a word is dead when it is said. Unlike that saying, Emily Dickinson (1955) seems to revise ‘her own dead word’ through the belief of poetic saying that is to live that day with or without word. Perhaps, love is a reason to live. Love is more than a word. It is a word which is better to do rather to say. In other words, I can say that it is great to live with or without love.
Some words in the English language tend to be overused and therefore lose their power. These are called Dead Words such as the word also. Also is dead when it is overused to say or to write. More interesting alternatives that should be used in its place are too, moreover, besides, as well as, and in addition to instead. The question might rise up is the word love dead word?
The same destiny may occur on the word love. The assumption that overused word will reduce its power and finally lose it. Due to its frequent use, even a scared word like love may face the bitter fate. Love will eat its self, nothing left.
Lexically, Oxford Illustrated American Dictionary (1998) and Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary (2000) define that love is any of a number of emotions related to a sense of strong affection and attachment. The word love can refer to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from generic pleasure (“I loved that meal”) to intense interpersonal attraction (“I love my husband”). This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to other emotional states.
The English word “love” can have a variety of related but distinct meanings in different contexts. Often, other languages use multiple words to express some of the different concepts that English relies mainly on “love” to encapsulate; one example is the plurality of Greek words for “love.” Cultural differences in conceptualizing love thus make it doubly difficult to establish any universal definition (Paul Kay, 1984: New Series 86 (1): 65–79).
Greek’s cultural view distinguishes several different senses in which the word “love” is used. For example, Ancient Greek has the words philia, eros, agape, storge, and xenia. However, with Greek (as with many other languages), it has been historically difficult to separate the meanings of these words totally. At the same time, the Ancient Greek text of the Bible has examples of the verb agapo having the same meaning as phileo.
In addition, the Latin language (Ancient Roman) has several different verbs corresponding to the English word “love.” Amāre is the basic word for to love, as it still is in Italian today. The Romans used it both in an affectionate sense as well as in a romantic or sexual sense. From this verb come amans—a lover, amator, “professional lover,” often with the accessory notion of lechery—and amica, “girlfriend” in the English sense, often as well being applied euphemistically to a prostitute. The corresponding noun is amor (the significance of this term for the Romans is well illustrated in the fact, that the name of the City, Rome—in Latin: Roma—can be viewed as an anagram for amor, which was used as the secret name of the City in wide circles in ancient times), which is also used in the plural form to indicate love affairs or sexual adventures. (Thomas Köves-Zulauf, Reden und Schweigen, 1972)
Whilst, Paul Oskar Kristeller, (1980) in Renaissance Thought and the Arts: Collected Essays asserts that as an abstract concept, love usually refers to a deep, ineffable feeling of tenderly caring for another person. Even this limited conception of love, however, encompasses a wealth of different feelings, from the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love to the nonsexual emotional closeness of familial and platonic love to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love (Juan Mascaró, The Bhagavad Gita 2003).
Love in its various forms acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative art. Such as in a lyric of the song, the word love exists in the form of freedom of expression. One side, love becomes a wild word lives in the wild world. In other side, love is just an alternative word to use. And again, that word will end and rest in peace in the recycle bin.
Joe Tempest, singer of Europe, 80s rock band defines that the word love is no more of the other words to say. He states in the single hit; Prisoner in Paradise that love is just another word to say. Unlike Tempest, Antony kiddies (Red Hot Chili Pepper) believes that love is one of the hottest words ever exists in the world; the hottest word in the world.
Recently, love is a hard thing to find it cannot be reached even in the dating service or short message service; chat n ‘date. In contrast of a flamboyant rock star, who likes to spit words of love and place it like the other words, sacredly the word love becomes so hot; hotter than hell and being enfolded inaccessible. The easy thing associated with the word love is enough to acclaim.
As if it is associated with Qur’ban day, definitively, that emerges a definitive clarification of the word love is synonymous for sacrifice, the love is sacrifice, which is usually a minimum initial phases of hurt feeling as Abraham sacrifices his feelings to sacrifice his own beloved son; love is sacrifice, or to love is to sacrifice. The keyword for gaining the love is willingness to commit to kill a sense. Ironically, Rhoma Irama objects how it can happen while he agrees on what Nazareth reveals; Love hurt. For that reason, it is better to save love just in a word not in the real world. Sage advice of guitarist Brian May (Queen) confirms that too much love will kill you.
Along the way, in the conditions of present text, love has found its foreign formations. Along with the development and the changing times, love has entered the gates of the heart mix with almost no sense. There are circumstances that force people to learn to love; learn how to love and forget how to hate, so if you fall in love for the umpteenth time, there is no love song to play but love to make with no taste. Bin Hard, love observer in one of his essays asserts that there is no involvement of emotional feeling in the era of the numbers when love is measured in digital boundaries.
Currently, the level of love does not need to be clarified with the question; How your deepest love? (Beatless). Question will only bother the romance. Certainly, that hinders the love travel and marriage. Love does not have to be clearly expressed; There is a hole in my heart that can only be filled by you (Gary Cherone, Extreme: Love Song, 1991) or You always have a place within my heart (Mike Tramp, White Lion: Till Death Do Us Apart, 1989).
In my point of view, today love is to be a regular thing. Love is not as bombastic as Qais al- Qorni or laila Majnun’s love. Unlike Zuleika’s spectacular love to Joseph, love is the practically simple thing in the end. Finally, love does not need strangely juxtaposed with Rabiah al-Adawiyah’s love. For Rudi Sujarwo, love is an inspiring for title of his film Ada Apa dengan Cinta and for a mama, love is her daughter called Laura.
Those are the end of love in the term of real love world. Simply, the death of love may because of the absolute value loss. Betrand Russell describes love as a condition of absolute value as opposed to relative value. As if it is overused and abused, perhaps love is one step closer to its grave. Yet, as a word love is love that cannot be replaced or substituted by interesting alternatives that should be used in its place.
In short, the fact shows that the death of love wordily never appears. Love is not dead but Cupid is dead.
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