[HPforGrownups] Re: Dumbledore's Love ( a rather lengthy post, warning for those faint of heart)

[Karen]

No: HPFGUIDX 147783

kchuplis (not in answer to any specific post but some general thoughts this thread has brought to me):

I'm just not sure why DD's ability to love or in what capacity he loves is even in question?  The whole speech at the end of OoTP seems pretty plain, especially in its culmination:

"I cared about you too much," said Dumbledore simply. "I cared more for your happiness that your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act."

I mean, that's just a snippet of the whole speech and yet, it seems to me to be pretty clear. It's kind of a reflection of the whole "how can Harry love Sirius" argument too. People do not have to be with other people for years and years to love them, for whatever reasons, in whatever way very quickly and very deeply. That is the mystery of love. Why do we immediately take to some people and not others?  Why can you love someone and still argue bitterly with them? How is it that we do make tremendous mistakes, mistakes we see in other relationships, when we are too deep in our own situation to recognize it? There really is no deeper mystery than love and to ask to quantify DD's or Harry's or anyone elses love in these situations is really asking for the impossible for even IF they were real and even IF we were those people we would not be able to say exactly and in the whole *how* we love, nor how much, nor why - at least not in such a way to be able to cover all aspects because there is always that one aspect that you just don't know. If we could, we would probably be able to manage world peace. But if we could, love would also lose that last vestige of "awe". Why are we trying to bottle this? Quantify it? Qualify it? Since it isn't really a "measurable" thing, isn't it enough to know it exists?

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