Orcas, Love, and I will DIE for you!

I was reminded today of something I wrote almost at the beginning of this blog: "Talking of Orcas, Havelock tells a great story about how some killer whales who were wave hunting him and a seal on an ice floe - they swim around creating waves so you end up getting washed off the floe by the waves - washed them both off only to put them back on the floe and do it again. They weren't hunting, they were teaching the youngsters how do it, he said. Havelock says it was the luckiest day of his life and he's never, ever having lunch with a seal again!"

Well I found this today, not brilliant quality but so little on YouTube is! Be amazed!

There's nothing like a little practical demonstration and participation to get your message across to the young ones.

I was thinking about love today :) Not the parental love that adults have for their offspring not the love the offspring have for their parents. This seems to me to be fundamentally different to the love you have for another, unrelated individual. A young child's love, it seems to me, is firmly rooted in instinct. The primeval attachment that young have for their parents, especially their mother. An imprinted love almost. Once acquired during the brief months following birth, it is never lost. It may be altered, it may fade as the child grows into adulthood and they acquire their own children but to lose your love for your parent, or for a parent to lose their love for their child, this is surely an aberation?

No, the love I was considering was the love between unrelated individuals, whether child or adult, whether same sex or different sex. What makes the bond? And how tight is it? While there are quite sound evolutionary and biological advantages to forming lasting pair bonds in a social community, whether as an aid to the survival of the social group or the raising of offspring, is that all it is? Would you steal for love? Would you abandon your parents for love? Would you kill for love? Would you die for love? Most of us, thankfully, will never have to make such a choice but, nonetheless, what would you do?

These are not fanciful ideas. History both recent and ancient, literature both recent and ancient, are littered with examples of the depths people will sink and the heights to which they will rise, in the name of love! Are these people merely deluded? Or are they expressing an emotion which we all share but seldom if ever get the opportunity to express in such a fundamental way. And if we gained the opportunity, how would we react?

Would we admit to a crime we did not commit so that a true, but misguided, friend might go free? Or would we ask that they take reponsibility for their actions? Would it be noble to kill your wife's rapist if as a result of the violation, she took her own life? Or would just one more crime in an indifferent world be sufficient to prevent another? Would you steal because the only thing that made your loved one happy was to shop at Blumingdales? Or would you accept an unhappy partner? Would you ruin a women's reputation just because you wanted her husband so badly it squeezed your heart in a vice? Or would you accept your lot and 'retire to the country'?

You see, I think humans have elevated 'love' to such a pedastal, that anything is possible, and dare I say, acceptable in its pursuit. The French even have a crime on the statute books, called 'crime passionelle', a crime of passion, which invariably means that you CAN GET AWAY with bloody murder!

So, have I ever been in love so much, am I so much in love, that I will die for it? Yes! But I know I am/was misguided!