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Introduction
Love has six billion
faces. That is how many people
there are in the world, although
there will be more by the time
you finish reading this paragraph.
Actually, love has more than
six billion faces because each
human being has many faces of
love. The loving face I turn
towards my mother is subtly
different from the face I turn
towards my lover or my child,
and different still from the
loving face I turn towards a
landscape or my home or a favourite
painting. And love has billions
of faces beyond that: the faces
of the ancestors stretching
back millions of years into
the past. Cro-Magnon woman knew
love as she held her baby. The
first cave artists knew love
as they swept the line of a
bison on to the cave wall and
left their handprints beside
it.
What I am trying
to say is that love is a force
with infinite expressions.
With each page that I have written,
I have become more aware of
my own limitations in trying
to filter this infinite experience
through one finite life and
sensibility. I am a single human
being, stuck in time and place,
with many limitations, and yet
I am writing a book that claims
to be everything I have ever
learned about love, in the hope
that I might have some insights
to pass on to you. Somewhere
between the infinite manifestations
of love and my single human
existence I hope that I have
stumbled across some universal
experiences. Before you read
on I want you to take certain
things into account.
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