Letter from the Founder | February 2021
For the Love of Love
Welcome to February and to another edition of Guide Collective Magazine. Since we are in the month of Valentine’s Day here in the US, we’ve chosen “Love” as the writing prompt for our guides. While romantic love sounds like the obvious approach, love can take on so many forms and we are excited to share the different interpretations each guide took based on culture and context.
For me, love in the romantic sense is a bit of an unfortunate topic. My experience has been an unlucky one. On the one hand, I was lucky enough to have found epic love, but on the other hand, the loss of that love was also epic. Reflecting on broken dreams has led me to an interesting realization: the opposite of love is not hate, but loss.
While perhaps we cannot all relate in the same way to love, we certainly can relate to loss in these days. Loss of jobs, loss of community, loss of routines, loss of what we all understood to be good and normal and no clear sense of our way of life returning. Dealing with this loss that we all face creates a community sense of grief. Maybe it hasn’t been on the top of your mind, but I’ll bet it’s there, lurking under the surface. We are all grieving in some way.
Making the connection between love and loss has led me to find a way to ease the inevitable bouts with anxiety and sadness. If loss is the opposite of love, then love must be the antidote to loss. So, what does that mean practically? It means that maybe our best path through this tunnel is to project love whenever and however we can.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Even if you’re stoic and not prone to expressing love, there are so many ways you can “share the love” in dark times. Check in on friends. Tip generously. Randomly send flowers. Take cookies to a neighbor. Whatever small gesture you can muster, make it a goal to do at least one thing per day that expresses love in your own way.
Connecting with people means so much and takes so little. It’s a simple idea, but giving of yourself with love is a powerful way to counteract the feeling of loss. Maybe the Beatles were right, “all you need is love.” Or perhaps, as they more sagely proposed, “…in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”
This month we have lots of love-ly events coming up. Our next book for GC Book Club will be The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, which will be led by Susanna Perruchini and myself. I realized recently that the great love of my life may be Italy itself, and Sicily in specific, so it is apt to share a novel about the beautiful, complicated Sicilian soul with all of you.
And our team of amazing guides has worked hard to bring you compelling content: from unique takes on love in its various forms (we’ll start the month with two pieces by Ben Curtis and Francisco Glaría) to stories of historical places and personages, and from walking tours of distant lands to cultural insights and connections on podcasts and live streams. We love sharing our love of travel.
As always, thank you for being here with us and continuing to keep your travel dreams alive. We will keep the window to the world open to you, and always do it with love.
Andiamo,
Sarah