Sometimes if you come up against a sticking point or confusion, it can help enormously if you look up the definitions of the words that are being used to create or describe the dilemma. Definitions can be extraordinarily useful. But if a word has multiple definitions, do you chose the one that matches your preconceptions or the meaning that reveals more useful insights?

Howabout the definition of a simple word that has so much meaning that the last book to be written about can never be? I give you - love.

Of all the definitions of love I have ever heard (and that’s a lot) the one I like the most is: ‘love is the overvalued idea’. Now I know I didn’t make that up, I definitely read it or heard it someplace before, but I just Googled the phrase and came up empty. Either Google is broken or I’m a genius (or the phrase doesn’t yet exist in searchable text on the internet*, which, let’s face it, is considerably more plausible).

That’s because love is what makes this wife, husband, lover, child, parent or bank manager more important and more can’t-live-withoutable than any of the other seven billion very odd people on this remote, spinning rock. Love is the motivation to go beyond the possible, to break the unbreakable, to do what everyone else tells you can’t be done. Love is the reason we write. Perhaps fiction novels are the ultimate manifestation of the overvalued idea.


*it does now