OhhOhh, this is a difficult topic. I usually pick my themes from what comes across my way or what I hear or read in the news, or what people say to me. The other day a friend and I walked through the old city of Nicosia and crossed over to the other part and we talked about peace and love in the family and among friends. How easy it were, we concluded, if we all would do just that and stick to the rules in our individual small circles, there would be no trouble in the world. I am present in face book because I need to know what my artist friends are up to and at least once a day most of them post a quote of love and friendship which leads me to the assumption that people have a deep longing for it, otherwise why quote?

Here are some samples:

„Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.“
(Oscar Wilde) 

“Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.“

(Jim Morrison)

„I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.“ (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

„Where there is love there is life.“ (Mahatma Gandhi)

„A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.“ (Thomas Carlyle)

„Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.“
(Mother Teresa)

Without exception everyone wants to be loved and respected, people, animals, big and small; love or rather the want for love is the motor for everything, love includes respect, passion for somebody or something. If you love your work you will create great things. If you love people you will be a good leader. If you love and respect your family, children and husband will listen to your advice.  

If you only love yourself you will be alone, although a certain amount of self-love is necessary; if you are empty you cannot pour out love, as simple as that.

One of the basic things for love is respect, the respect for the other’s freedom and individuality. We are all different, just imagine that not two noses of the same shape exist, not two identical finger prints, all genetic systems are different…..and thus are our mind and character. What an immensely rich world there is.

Religious love, many find that the religious people in power often forget that they should preach love and respect and not their own interpretation of  the holy books; why don’t they stand up and tell the responsible leaders to stop war, to stop misusing their own people for personal interests. Why do they keep looking on the death of thousands of innocents? Make Art not War, I read this morning, we should tell Mr. Assad that and all those that are involved; they should have their weapons taken away and be given a painting brush instead, in order to paint the scenes of a destroyed  country, but in situ, please…..but…. perhaps they want the country dead because they have construction companies among their relatives which would rebuild the places, that…. is a different kind of love.

But let us come back to the small primary cell of love…that is the love between man and woman on which everything else is built, the cell that is divided and divided for the sake of a family, a community and finally a people, a country.  To keep love alive in the small cell we again need the respect for each other, not as master and servant but as two equivalent individuals.

Because without love and the meeting of love cells, we would not exist, you know, get that in your head.