Despite years of struggling against its more common manifestations, I have always been obsessed with romantic love. Let’s not confuse this with a fixation with being in love; the two are not synonymous (although I think one does tend to lead to the other). Still, I watch a disproportionate amount of chick flicks for my gender and sexual alignment, and I have way too many love poems memorized. A solid quarter of my quote collection explores the nature of love, and I hum love songs to myself during the quiet moments in my car. It would be nice if this decade-long hobby produced expertise (instead of, you know, addiction), but there you have it…
The Definition
One thing that’s starting to bother me about love is that our definition of the emotion seems to be supplied externally; because love is at the heart of what it means to be human, we’re constantly pelted with different maxims on “the real meaning of love.” Even setting aside the obvious culprits of poetry, literature, plays, and film, there still remain our parents, our friends, our church, each telling us what it means to really be in capital-L love for real. “Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” “Love is one soul in two bodies.” “Love is kind.”
These gems are more like sea glass; pretty trinkets that we feel lucky to have found, worn down smooth by time and use. We keep them in our pocket and idly finger them, more out of habit than anything. Sometimes we even wish on them. Ultimately, though, they’re just foggy glass; translucent at best, and transparent only in the worst ways. Any one of us could probably spout off a half-dozen of these maxims.
But what do they mean? When the cute couple that has been together for fifty years gives their sage advice to the newlyweds, telling them that “I thought I knew what love was when I was in your position but, after fifty years, I realize that I had no idea.” Well I appreciate the confidence boost, Obi-Wan, but that doesn’t really help me out does it? What about the same couple vaguely trying to capture and explain the transcendence of love to the couple that has just begun dating and is head-over-heels in the good, ole’ fashioned, wherefore-art-thou-type love? Isn’t the problem different only in degree, not in kind?
When does that part of us change? In the beginning, we try to describe what we feel simply because, if we don’t vocalize it in some way, we’re going to explode! Then, somewhere along the way, we catch ourselves telling our kids “that’s not love; it’s just an infatuation. Love is ___.” We become prescriptivists instead of descriptivists. The prescriptivist says, “What you’re feeling is love because it fits this definition.” The descriptivist says, “These are the ways that love has expressed itself to me.”
Who made us the experts on the emotions of others! Hell, who really even has a solid grasp on his own emotions? If I think I’m in love, is it not so? (Chuck Klosterman has an excellent essay on this. Read it.) Why does it have to be validated by the wisdom of the ages, or the experience of my mentors, or even (gasp!) the reciprocity of the object of my love? Who is to prescribe how love is to manifest itself through me? (Aside: I find it…amusing that it is doctrinally accepted that the Spirit can touch people in different ways, but that most people think love has only one face.)
The truth is that love is an organism. Well, more accurately, love is the weft of your being, and you are an organism. OK, one more try: love is organic; it grows along with you. “I didn’t know love back then,” is as inane as saying, “crawly-thing wasn’t a butterfly back then.” Sure it was!
Of course, once I understood all of the things that I’ve written today, I was still hubristic enough to try and define love, if only for myself. The only way I could do it was to look at its products (or symptoms, for the more cynical of us). But, even as I tried to do that, the phantoms of everyone who has ever given me advice on love began to glide up from the depths. For example, I pondered how, when I was in love with Lex, I thought about her all of the time (figuratively people, give me a break!). Then one of my ghosts drifted up and admonished that feelings like that were characteristic of infatuation or, worse, lust. OK, Ghost, but what if I’ve already “satisfied my lust” (you have to talk like this to ghosts; they’re very sensitive) and the feelings haven’t changed? Can I call it love then? And he gets sucked down into the Egon’s trap. “But what changed?” I murmur to myself, looking at the blinking red light. “Nothing. Right?” Of course, then another ghost appears (you would be shocked at how haunted my frontal lobe is) and throws more wrenches at my monkey. “But you didn’t think about Grass all of the time. So that means you didn’t love her.” But I did, I argue. “Well, then, you’ve got some inconsistencies to iron out of your definition.” (My ghosts are irritatingly rational. Did I forget to mention?)
I’ve given up on trying to define love. A definition has two purposes: to help recognize and to help teach. But I know when it hits me, and love is the one skill that doesn’t have to be spelled out for us. Sometimes it is more intense than at others. But, as I’ve already ranted, that means nothing. The intensity of a light doesn’t change the fact that you are no longer in darkness, just how much you can now see.
