Contributed by Cindi Pearce, Catalogs.com Top 10 Guru

The Beatles WERE right. “All you need is love. Love is all you need.”

Without love what is there?

Oh, you can have money and fame and fortune, but if you don’t have family and friends who love you and can share your money and fame and fortune with you … as well as support you when you are down and out (which is probably a lot more likely to happen, temporarily, of course, then the fame and fortune part) you are going to be a very sad and lonely person.

The top ten reasons love is all you need are …

10. Love is healing

Wouldn’t you much rather be in the company of people that are lovely and loving rather than in the midst of a bunch of hateful, treacherous, evil backstabbers? That’s one very good reason why love is all you need. Love is healing. Hate is destructive.

9. Energy saving

If you are a person of love, rather than one full of hate and resentment, it is easier to navigate life because you learn to forgive and forget. In other words, get over it, don’t hold a grudge and move on. Love thy enemies? Well, maybe not but you don’t have to spend one more second thinking about them. Spit them out. Don’t waste anymore energy on them. Forgiving is a big part of being a loving person who has better things to do than stick needles in a voodoo doll.

8. Anticipation

Loving your job or your hobbies or your car or that sassy new dress or that certain movie makes you happy and keeps you smiling. It’s good to have things in your life, even material things, that you love and look forward to doing or seeing or participating in. If you don’t have the capacity for love and joy and enthusiasm, your life is going to be very dark and dreary.

7. Unconditionally healthy

Loving a dog or a cat or any kind of animal is good for you and for the animal. People who have pets live longer and are healthier. Obviously, domesticated animals that have loving owners live longer. Animals love unconditionally as should you.

6. Love yourself

Self love is critical. If you don’t like yourself, let alone love yourself, don’t expect much. You can’t go around inside a brain and body that you don’t care about enough to take care of. There is nothing wrong with loving yourself. You’re supposed to. Self-hatred will do you in. Just don’t get carried away and get the big head. Loving yourself is different from as conceit or entitlement.

5. Tough love

Love gives you the bravery to be tough at times. This is called tough love. When someone you care about is harming themselves by their actions and behaviors, and you fear for their safety and future, you may need to turn away and let them find their way on their own, even though this may seem counterintuitive. You can love somebody to death, if that love is preventing them from growing up.

4. Courage

Love gives you courage to do things that you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to do. Mothers who love their children have been known to do Herculean feats such as lift cars off of children who are stuck underneath. Love gives you the courage to donate a body organ or bone marrow to someone you care about, even if you don’t even know them. There are living organ- and marrow donors who have never met the recipients and yet make this huge gesture because they are people who care and love.

3. Grandchildren

Love ultimately leads to grandchildren. This is the secret surprise that parents don’t know about until it happens. You get through the process of raising your kids (remember, you DO love them and love is what created them), and get a breather, and then on the heels of this learn that you are going to become a grandparent. Don’t despair, unless of course the mother- or father-to-be is 14 and then that is a problem. Grandkids are the icing on the cake. You don’t have the responsibility of them (or shouldn’t have) but you do have the joy that kids can provide, and then you send them packing. Adios, amigos. Grammy needs a nap.

2. Intimacy

Love leads to sex. Of course, you can have loveless sex but sex with love attached is the best. And that can lead to children, and children are a wonderful thing. The next thing you know, you have a whole bunch of people to love (and get mad at occasionally – okay, a lot!) and a whole bunch of people who love you back. You are a family. Families ARE love. Oh, sure, many are fraught with tension and heaven only knows what else but at the end of the day, even if you don’t like to admit it, you DO love your annoying brother.

1. Mother Love

The most extraordinary love of all and the one that hits you over the head with a resounding clang and shakes you to your boots is the love most mothers and fathers experience the second they set eyes on their baby. Love absolutely at first sight. Mother love is one-of-a-kind.

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