On Love

What Love Is Like

Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.

         - Piet Hein

Be that as it may,  since time out of mind, people have been trying to capture the meaning, the essence of "love".  And it's possible to come close, as with this definition:

Love  n.

1. A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness.
2. A feeling of intense desire and attraction toward a person with whom one is disposed to make a pair; the emotion of sex and romance.
3. 1. Sexual passion.
   2. Sexual intercourse.
   3. A love affair.
4. An intense emotional attachment, as for a pet or treasured object.
5. A person who is the object of deep or intense affection or attraction; beloved. Often used as a term of endearment.
6. An expression of one's affection: Send him my love.
7. 1. A strong predilection or enthusiasm: a love of language.
   2. The object of such an enthusiasm: The outdoors is her greatest love.

Dry as a popcorn fart, that, and while seemingly comprehensive, it doesn't quite get there.  For one thing, there's the obvious cop-out, using the word "ineffable" which is really just "inexpressible", or "yeah, we're struggling with this, too."  And I just don't think it allows for broad enough scope.

I tend to open the iris right up when it comes to "love".   I don't think it needs several sub-categories.  "Well, there's the love you feel for your husband; and then the love you feel for your kids; and of course the love you feel for your Mom; and let's not forget ..." and on and on.

I don't think so. 

I think "love" is pass/fail.  I love you or I don't.  I don't love you a "little bit", and I don't love someone else a "little bit more".

I think a wise person navigates his or her way carefully until there is that moment when love is there.  And once it's there, I don't think it's like a faucet, where you turn it on just a hair and let it trickle out.  You love or you do not love.

That leaves lots of room for other emotions.  I have many friends whom I do not love but whom I really like - men and women.  Of course, I also have some people - fewer, to be sure, but more than I think is good - whom I loathe.  Their position in my universe (should they care one iota) is not irretrievable - I have had people whom I have first loathed and come to quite like.   But for now, we'll put them on the left end of the Bell Curve.  And in the middle, the vast majority of humanity - the group I could characterize as "I don't really know you enough to like or dislike you, but I'll make an effort to at least be cordial and polite".

So there is a sliding scale for me - for all of us - to a point.  But (and this may be just for me) it ends right at "love".  That's the top rung on the ladder.  There is no compound definition for me - I don't love friends in a "friendly" way or my daughters in a "fatherly" way or my wife in a "husbandly" way.  I just ... love them.

Now, how I behave - how I express my love - is surely tied to the differences in those relationships.  My friend Gord, whom I love, is more likely to see that expressed as a willingness to go an extra mile to do him a favour.  My daughters see my love expressed for them in any number of ways, including advice, hugs, getting misty-eyed for them, lecturing them on safety, and of course unmercifully teasing them.  And as for how I express my love to my wife, mind your own damn business.

I don't distinguish between friends from my daily activities and people I have come to know through letters or e-mails or travels to other countries.  Where you are, what your circumstances are, and even how you feel about me aren't really relevant in my deliberations.  I love you or I do not.

I could no more love one person more than another than I could choose which of my children I love more.  I honestly believe that.  "Love" is a 100% thing.  All or nothing at all.  And the good news is, if I love you, I don't have any way of scaling that back to "like" - so it's for life.  You're stuck with me.

That's how I see love.  This is how William Shakespeare saw it:

SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Now .. how do you see it? 

Comments

[laura]

I'll have to think about this one for a bit, because convincing you is always a challenge.
Not that I want to change your mind, of course... but rather, for you to consider another point of view.
And while I understand where you're coming from on this issue, I still think it needs some work.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Maybe I'll comment later when I've had some time to mull over it all. ;)

[Laura]

p.s. "...dry as a popcorn fart?"

man, that's original. I could almost hear the "popcorn" going off. LOL!

[William]

What? No quoting the J. Geils Band?

[Brikwall]

When my wife and I decided to split (okay...when she decided we would split), her comment to me was "I don't love you anymore." My response was to print out 2 copies of that very same Shakespearean Sonnet. One copy ended up on the wall next to my computer desk, where she could see it. The other copy is still in my wallet: it is there to remind me, should I ever think otherwise, that love simply doesn't end on a whim.

[Closet Metro]

Love puzzles me.

[Tanya]

Love is something different to everyone, which could lead to many debates.
I doubt a dictionary can ever define it and really capture the meaning.

I love my mother. I do not always like her. BIG difference. Once I love someone, I rarely stop unless they hurt me beyond repair. I still love my ex-fiance. He is a good man, but not the one I was meant to marry.

For me, loving someone means putting them first, above all others and sometimes, above myself. If I love you, I am in...I am ALL in. Nothing 1/2 way about it.

The opposite of love is not hate or loathing. There is still emotion involved in loathing, albeit, negative emotion. Apathy is the opposite. Not caring what happens to this person, not caring what they say or do. If I ever get to the point of not caring about someone...well, let's just say, it takes a big event for that to happen.

Falling in love with someone seems to come out of the blue and hit you like a ton of bricks. The first time I said I love you to the boyfriend, it took me by surprise as much as it did him. It just felt natural. Falling in love shouldn't hurt; it should feel like the most natural thing on the planet.

People who say that relationships are 50/50 are lying. If you are not 100/100 into the relationship, it's going to fail.

Sitting here, thinking about those I love, my heart is swelling and I feel almost giddy. These people in my life whom I love, they make it worthwhile. And I am not sharing how I demonstrate my love for them either. :)

[Nils]

Laura: you and I have batted this around for years and I suspect we'll bat it around for many more. I'm like you in this way (too): I don't really see the need to convince anyone else that my way of looking at it is best. I'm keen to throw it out there, if only to provoke a discussion, but everybody's view of love is necessarily very personal. But you know how attentively I listen to what you have to say, so I'll look forward to your further thoughts ;)

William - in any faceoff between J. Geils and Shakespeare, I gotta go with the bigger dawg.

Brik: A sad, hard-learned, but important lesson - thanks for sharing it.

CM: As always, deadly honest. And really, it puzzles us all.

Tanya: always love your comments. And yeah, I get a swelling feeling every time I think about love, too.

[Squirl]

What's with the "swelling feeling" thing here?

[Nils]

Umm .. that was just Bucky Bait.

[wordgirl]

I think the word is overused to the extent we've lost a clear way to define it. Defining love (definitively) is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. However, I know it when I see it.

[Tanya]

Love hurts so much
Love cuts so deep
It's a hot sweat and a cold shake
Like drowning in your sleep

Elton John-Cold

[Bucky Four-Eyes]

That swelling feeling...

It's just swell.

Hey, I got to this party late. And that is the only Shakespeare sonnet I've ever memorized (back when I had brain cells).

[Squirl]

You finally got the right sister with your Bucky Bait.

[kalki]

I first read your take on love about a year ago, I guess - you'd mentioned it in Susie's comments, I think. I've contemplated it multiple times since then. And it makes sense to me. Love is so all-consuming that there's no room for degrees of intensity. It just IS.

[Nessa]

"I could no more love one person more than another than I could choose which of my children I love more. I honestly believe that. "Love" is a 100% thing. All or nothing at all. And the good news is, if I love you, I don't have any way of scaling that back to "like" - so it's for life. You're stuck with me."

That pretty much says exactly what I always want to express...