AS IF WE ARE NOT OURSELVES
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR: MICHAEL KIMBALL: JUNE 2011


Love Letters: One Dozen Thoughts and Questions

1. It is so difficult to write about love – in part, because the words used to describe the love are only an approximation of the love and not the actual love.

2. Sometimes, a love letter is also an apology.

3. Why do love letters so often try to quantify the love?

4. Love letters are mostly written when the two people aren’t together – when the two people are separated by geography or by emotion, when one of the people feels something that the other person doesn’t, or when one of the people feels something that the other person no longer does.

5. Why is it so difficult to know if somebody loves us?

6. How do we get the person who we love to love us back?

7. Love letters are usually written at a crisis in the love.

8. There is so much waiting in love letters.

9a. Why do intense feelings of love lead to irrational thoughts?

9b. Why does love make us do things that make us feel as if we are not ourselves?

10. No matter how a love letter is written, whatever the language used, all love letters convey great feeling. Love letters are about anticipation, desire and, of course, love, but they also convey many other (often negative) feelings – including anger, regret, self-loathing, sadness, fear, and hate.

11. How should our love best be given to another person, if we have that love to give?

12. There is something beautiful about glimpsing the love between two people I do not know.