Love

Today, as I was half listening in my philosophy class and half paying attention to a letter I was writing, I went off on a tangent about love. And while many many many more intelligent people than I have tried to define or even just describe love and have failed rather miserably, I guess I am tossing my name in the hat and putting in my two cents.

Science is proving that love exists because of chemicals in the brain. So it is not just some odd phenomenon that people create based upon their physical attraction to someone, it's ligit. Love exists and is about as necessary as oxygen for humans to function properly.

I would like to clarify that I am talking about romantic love not familial love or friend love, etc. So here's some of what I came up with and a bit more that I have been thinking about...

Obviously, love is something that cannot be seen with the human eye (and few of us have the time, money, or gall to ask someone to get a brain scan to see how they feel) so it is something that we must trust exists in the object of our affection, that what we feel is reciprocated. It is faith, not knowledge, that allows us to fall in love completely, trusting that the other person will meet us half way with their devotions. Knowledge, I think, is the second part, the part that makes or breaks relationships. The age old question of what does love mean is individual to each person and really, only complicates things. Once a couple trusts that they share love for each other and not some ulterior motives based on lust, forming a bond based on how to love one another is the key.

I don't think it really matters what love is as a whole. Love is so personal, it could never be defined for every person in one way and that is what makes it so special. It is when your idea of love matches up with someone else's idea of love that you have found the person worthy of sharing that love with. For one person, love may mean going out together for dinners, having sex, and coming back weekly. If they can find a partner who believes the same thing, more power to them. However, human nature and selfishness rarely allow people to believe that true love could exist outside of a one to one relationship. So there is one defining factor of love that applies to many people, they want to be the only one the other person loves. Personally I think that is more than fair, which I guess means that is one of the ways I would describe love. Love is entwined with every part of life. The question, do my partner and I have the same ideas of love? might lead to a billion other questions like, do my partner and I have the same goals in life? Do we want to be treated the same? Do we want to cuddle under the stars at night? And do we want to do these things together? Are we willing to give up looking for another person that might have a similar idea of love to us? Are we willing to give up lust for others in order to be with each other?

Love itself is not complicated. It's there or it isn't and you trust that it is or isn't in another person. The complicated part is in finding someone who feels love the same way.

Most fifteen year old girls believe they have found true love or think they need to find it right away, and while some do, many get their hearts broken. I don't think this is because of anything like puppy love or that they didn't love at all. I think what people find at fifteen, really is love. Usually, however, they are too young to know what love means to themselves let alone what love means to another person and confidence is usually a little too low to sit down and talk about their life goals and what love really means to them with their teenage partner. Most adults don't have the courage to do this. Eventually, most people grow to realize that the love they shared in high school was not true, everlasting love. It was a way of learning about love and developing what love is to them.

So what happens when people break what you thought was their idea of love? The trust is broken, the easy part is broken, and the hard part has to be redefined all over again. When someone cheats on their partner, it doesn't necessarily mean they don't love them, it means their ideas of love have changed, or maybe that person just made a big mistake and found out more strongly what love means to them. Whether or not their partner's idea of love includes forgiveness for that kind of behavior is then what is challenged.

In this sense, people are constantly finding out about what they believe is love, what they would do for love, and how their own love aligns with another persons. It is a continuous path of redefinition and discovery.

One of my favorite passages about love doesn't really address the idea of growth and definition, but as far as finding someone who compliments you in any way, I think it has it about right:

We're all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you've been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there's no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complimentary way. But it takes a lot of living to fully grow into your own wrongness and it isn't until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems-- the ones that make you truly who you are--that you're ready to find a life-long mate. Only then do you finally know what you're looking for. You're looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: The right, wrong person--someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, "this is the problem I want to have."
--Galway Kinnell

When you've found that special someone who is wrong in just the right way, you've found someone who shares your ideas of love, someone who you can grow with and perhaps, your definition of love grows to encompass not the idea of that person, but the person in and of himself/herself.

So I guess what it boils down to is that Love is easy, thinking, knowledge, and learning to have faith in love are what complicate things, but are also what make love really worth the effort.