A is for Appetite

Valentine's Day 2011, and we begin with ... A is for Appetite.

Appetite (noun) is defined as (1) a desire for food or drink, any instinctive desire necessary to keep up organic life, (2) a desire to satisfy a bodily craving, as for sexual pleasure, and (30 a desire, liking or willingness: "a great appetite for work." It comes from the Old French apetit, from the Latin appetitus, a craving, from appetere, to desire ardently or strive after.

And isn't that what love is really about? Desire for the affection of another, craving the touch of the body of the one you love or lust for, willingness to open your heart to another and make room for the desires and dreams of another?

Yet Appetite is so much more. It's the willingness to say yes, yes, a thousand times yes. It's the desire to jump with your loved one into something new and unknown with excitement that somehow overcomes your anxiety. It's that you're eager to respond to the question that is also a call from your loved one: "Let's...." without knowing all the consequences. Appetite drives love in many ways, from the everyday to the obsessed, from the desire for small pleasures of shared experience to the all-consuming preoccupation that pushes everything else out of its way.

The Letter A is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.