thejunkyswife

A friend of mine sent me this to post on my blog, and I thought you guys would appreciate it. It's a new way of interpreting the saying, "Love Conquers All..." that's kind of perfect for the loved ones of addicts:

For centuries upon centuries, we have been misinterpreting this framed trio of words. The uninvormed masses breathlessly held up this dwarfish phase as a justification for snogging in public squares, abandoning wives, cuckolding husbands, for the escalating divorce rate, for swarms of ******* children begging for handouts in the Whitechapel and Aldgate tube stations--when in fact, there is nothing remotely encouraging or cheerful about this oft-quoted phrase. The Latin poet wrote "Amor vincit omnia" or "Love conquers all." He did not write, "Love frees all" or "liberates" all, and therein lies the first degree of our flagrant misunderstanding. Conquer: to defeat, subjugate, massacre, cream, make mincemeat out of. Surely, this cannot be a positive thing. And then, he wrote "conquers ALL"--not exclusively the unpleasant things, destitution, assassination, burglary, but ALL, including pleasure, peace, common sense, liberty and self-determination. And thus we may appreciate that Virgil's words are not encouragement, but rather a caveat, a cue to evade, shirk, elude the feeling at all costs, else we risk the massacre of the things we hold most dear, including our sense of self.