Love Will Keep Us Together

Love is the connection we all share

These partial lyrics are from one of the most recognizable love songs in music history. The husband and wife duo called themselves the Captain and Tennille. These catchy and addictive lyrics hypnotized the hearts, necks, shoulders and finger tips of lovers and lovers of music across seven continents back in 1975. As if it were the pre-cursor to We Are the World, everyone would assume their solo position to that famed vamp in the song that says, "When others are turnin' you off, who will be turnin' you on, I will, I will, I will, I- w-i-l-l". The thought of that alone will have you humming this, the rest of the day.

The Captain and Tennille were on to something with this song title. Even researchers the world over have discovered in a myriad of studies that love has and will always keep an individual together. Although science shows that music stimulates the brain functions in developing fetus' and has a restorative nature in brain injured patients; nothing motivates an individual to get out of bed and take a bath and put on make-up like the rhythm of the emotion called love. We bounce around the house and take sweet delight in almost everything we do 'cause of those four magical letters. Although the romantic effects of love are often synonymous with flowers, fragrance and poetic greeting cards; there is no greater stimuli for pheromones, our body's hormonal jet stream, like the melody and lyrics of a love song.

The moment you hear that familiar chord or harmony, your senses leap to attention as your fingers rush through the hallways of your brain pulling files of their face, smile and familiar ways. Roberta Flack's, The First Time Ever I saw Your Face; John Mayer's, Your Body is a Wonderland or Boys II Men's, I'll Make Love to You can bring the lives of the stay at home mom, Corporate CEO and bustling surgeon to a complete stop. The effects of those lyrics make you want to drop what you're doing and relive your life at its best. Even if that relationship didn't turn out for the best, you still secretly reminisce on when it was new and innocent. We think back to the affect that love had on the way we thought and behaved.

Love makes us want to be better people. There is something about that word that summons the common good in all of us. The Christmas season seems to stir that same gift of giving love that we all miraculously share. There is the love of finding that personal and spiritual fulfillment in a higher being. There is the love of landing your dream job or accomplishing a highly pursued personal goal. There is the feeling of love we feel with getting a new pet or a new physical possession like a car or home. But few things in life stir our emotions like the Stylistics would say "Betcha by Golly Wow" and motivate us to pursue higher and greater than the feeling we get when someone captures our heart.

We want to look better in the way we dress and smell. We keep our home and offices cleaner if we know they will be around. We treat people nicer because we are more fulfilled within. When we are in love we actually feel stronger and want to live better and longer. Medical science has proven that patients in the most critical condition heal faster and more consistently when there is someone to go home to. Love makes us eat better and lose weight. Love will make us visit the doctor more and even treat our co-workers better. Love will make us take our personal faith more seriously. Love will even give us super human strength to do the seemingly impossible like learn another language, pick up cars, or even finally to put down grudges and drop resentment. Love agrees with Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes in that "Love will lift us up where we belong". We're not made to self-destruct but to self- heal through seeking the best in others.

Love agrees with Anita Baker; Sweet Love never changes. Love captures the imagination of the most indifferent soul to pursue its greatest good. You and I both have seen love diminish the biggest Giants to starry eyed children; while that same love will make the most slight hearted ninety-pound weakling into the hero that saves the day; even if that day is just one more day in the battle of their life fighting an enemy within.

Love is that classic that transcends race, gender, age, nationality, socioeconomic status, religion, your height, your depth, your girth or even your state of mind. Love always wins. Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. Love is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Most importantly, love is free. If you overdose on it, it will never hurt you. Love is like Truth; it merits no reward nor does it dignify a response. Love is sovereign therefore stands by itself. Love will keep us together.