[mark12_30]

"The eskimos have fifty different words for "snow" because it's important to them." So as a culture, why don't we have fifty different words for "love"?

If I think of "love" as "loyalty and dedication and admiration and heartfelt affection" then I can easily see Eowyn continuing to love Aragorn; perhaps almost in the same way that she always did, for there was no intimacy nor understanding there, not in the sense that she later had with Faramir.

And, she could also have had that same "loyalty and dedication and admiration and heartfelt affection" for Faramir. It would simply have been layered, also, with intimate friendship, and the building of memories and the striving together for common goals, and the other forms (plural) of intimacy developed through time spent together in all the many and varied ways that a married couple spend time together.

I would hope that in addition to all of this, Harmony of Spirit would be included, and tenderness; those are things I consider very important to a marriage, and too often the first to fall by the wayside. When these appear external to a marriage, without being included within the marriage, that places a formidable external strain on a marriage. Since Aragorn (as we have seen) is a leader capable of great tenderness toward his subjects, Faramir has his work cut out for him. But I think he's more than up to the task.

(Sometimes I do wish that we had fifty words for love. )

[ September 23, 2002: Message edited by: mark12_30 ]