Blog 3663 – 11.14.2025

“The Greatest Thing You’ll Ever Learn…”

“… Is Just To Love and Be Loved In Return.” The title of today’s blog and the first line is a quote from the last line of Nature Boy, first recorded by Nate King Cole in 1948, just two years before I began this particular adventure in time and space.

Nature Boys was the name of a sub-culture group of proto-hippies base in Lost Angeles in the forties of whom the song’s author was a member. It is a simple lyric but quite profound.

I have written several blogs on the subject of love, a subject that a famous German poet in his book Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, advised poets to avoid. Imagine that, a poet avoiding the subject of love. Much like the warning  to avoid the subjects of religion, sex, and politics this is advice I am also loathe to follow. I do not particularly follow the writer’s suggestion to avoid cliches either or dangling prepositions. A fellow must have somewhere to hang his hat and where better than a love poem or a dangling preposition?

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is what Jesus answered when he was asked what is the greatest commandment: “Love God with all your heart, soul mind and strength. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as you love yourself.”The greatest love of all is to love yourself for only after having done that are you truly able to love another, be that God or your neighbor. 

“There greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OBCchFH6AVk55iiiOP5ZRJErTMINrJZn/view?usp=drivesdk

The Greatest Love Of All