On Top of the World

The old song by The Carpenters runs:

“I’m on top of the world looking down on creation,
And the only explanation I can find,
Is the love that I’ve found, ever since you’ve been around,
Has put me on the top of the world”

Love, even romantic love, always has this effect. When we are personally involved we find that our life changes, the world around us seems a much brighter place and even the most serious problem seems to be a minor irritant because we are in such a positive frame of mind. Everything we do seems to be easier, we get along better with family and friends, are more sympathetic to the difficulties experienced by others and tolerant of their, previously annoying, foibles. Why can’t we always feel like this? Maybe we can if we try harder!

If ever we need evidence of the vital and uplifting force represented by love, surely we need look no further. The well known phrases that have been coined with regard to love speak for themselves and show we humans do have a deeper awareness of the positive role love can play in any life.

“Love is blind,”

“Love never counts the cost,”

“The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread”. ~Mother Teresa,

“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.” ~Albert Einstein

“There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved. It is God's finger on man's shoulder.” ~Charles Morgan

“You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.” ~Jonathan Carroll, "Outside the Dog Museum"
And from Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians:

Though I speak with the tongues of Men and of Angels, but have not love, I am as sounding brass or tinkling cymbals. Though I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and have all knowledge; and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. Though I give all my goods to feed the poor and give my body to be burned and have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind; love envies not, it does not vaunt itself, is not puffed up, it seeks not its own, is not provoked, takes no account of evil and rejoices only in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.


If only we could find a way spend more time and effort in cultivating love that follows the foregoing principles, what a difference we would see in our lives. Because, “no man is an island,” such a personal transformation would soon translate itself into changes in society and from there to the whole world. Even if we just try harder to recapture Robert Browning’s “First fine, careless rapture“ and raise our spirits by recalling those moments from our memory, we would make ourselves and those around us so much happier.

And the ultimate? To find ourselves on top of the world: By far the best vantage point from which to view the Earth and all upon it.