A Familiar Word from Burt Bacharach

Burt Bacharach composed an ageless classic whose chorus goes:  “What the world needs now is love sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” I haven’t downloaded any of Bacharach’s greatest hits (no offense to Mr. Bacharach) but I just created a station for him on pandora.com. Back to the love, I see that the world’s need could be localized to sport or work for that matter.

A quick word association for things that come to mind when I hear love mentioned include: God, wife, young people, basketball and writing. And how do I know the love is not counterfeit for these? Try as I might, I can’t stop talking to God, I enjoy living and traveling with my wife (even if it’s just to the store), I teach, basketball is my endorphin switch and I wake up way too early to write if it’s something I can take or leave.

I used to think that Mr. Bacharach was telling us to love others more and rid the Earth of bigotry. Fair enough, but is it possible that what the world needs now is for us to love what we’re doing so that it’s not drudgery. If there’s too little love in the world, maybe it’s because we’ve been swindled and robbed of passion. I suppose even sports can become like a business to the kid who has absorbed peer pressure and expectations that make competing about anything but love. Love is not so nebulous a concept that it should be dismissed as irrelevant.It’s what brings meaning to our pursuits. Love denotes unabashed commitment and the question is not whether love exists in the world that needs more of it as much as it is, “Why aren’t we letting love live as we work, play and attempt to serve?”