The word “love” appears 310 times in the King James Bible, 348 times in the New American Standard Bible, 551 times in the New International Version and 538 times in the New Revised Standard Version.

Seems like the newer the version, the more Love is mentioned. I don’t quite know how that happened, but I’ll take more Love wherever I can get it.

I use the word love a LOT… and I mean it every time.

When I first meet someone I obviously don’t know who they are…but I know they’re someone new. Everyone presents uniqueness that I can get only from them. Ahh, more spice for my “stew of life”.

I have liked probably 95% of all people I’ve met in my 65 years. With each person I’ve met a “loading bar” is created. The dot at the far left of the bar is “like”. As we share time, laughs and experiences together the bar starts to fill with color… we’re filling the “love bar”. Liking someone is just a starting point for creating love.

Nora, my daughter has synesthesia. This is a neurological phenomenon in which she sees numbers and letters simultaneously as colors. In the same manner, I see each person’s love bar in color. No two are the same and everyone adds unique colors to my mural of Life.

I am aware there are different types of love. For example, the love I feel for David is one unique love. To simplify it, I would say that I wanted THAT love in my life every day. In 44 years (40 of them married) I have never felt that about another person…other than my children. This to me is “being” in love. (Can’t say I’ve always liked him, but I’ve always loved him).

I believe that people too often think that “being” in love is the only relationship that can get beyond “like”.  I wish to remind them that it’s mentioned up to 551 times in Bibles…not just once.

Yes, you can love throngs of people all at the same time. I know it can be done, because I do.

You might wonder about the 5% that I don’t like on first meet basis. Some of them have been poopy people and I just avoid them. The rest, I wait to see if at another time and another place, we might like each other. If we do, a new “bar” is created.

So, you can imagine my joy when I’m in a group of people that I love. The explosion of colors I see are better than any “trip” I took in the ‘60s & 70’s.