A heart-to-heart about Love

What is love?

Baby don’t hurt me… don’t hurt me, know more.

All kidding aside, love has got to be one of the most nebulous, vaguest, and yet most powerful things to evolve out of the human psyche when you think on it. Or maybe it’s how the term has grown to encompass so much of our personal likes and desires.

After all, what is it to love that song? Or that book, or TV show? What do you mean when you say I really love this ice cream? Or when you say that you really love the feeling of the beech on your bare feet? Or that you love your country? And how can that be part of the same feelings that bound you to family, friends, or even a lover?

Love, for me, like just about everyone else on the planet, is extremely hard to pin down. It’s a broad definition that covers a more intense form of desire; desire used here to describe the base wants that every animal has. That is, the preferred states of satisfaction, community, and security.

Or is that too clinical?

At any rate, love seems to spring from this basic requirement that we not be unhappy, that our needs are met, and that we belong somewhere. At least, as much as I’ve observed, anyway; both in myself, and in others. Food is a requirement. We need to avoid hunger in order to survive and to thrive. The same thing can be said about shelter, or the occasional involvement of others in our life to accomplish things. Plus we’re very much about the habitual, the comfortable, and the useful; which could explain why I have had a favorite coat through the years.

But love seems to transcend our needs into something else, something more. I mean, think about it; you NEED to breathe, but is it something you LOVE to do? If you’re a student of mindfulness, you may answer yes, but the majority of folks don’t give it a second thought as more than just a process their bodies must undergo to enrich blood with a most needed and precious gas that helps keep them alive.

But somewhere in our evolution the involved feelings and desires to have our needs met grew into something much richer and deeper. Perhaps it’s due to our developing into a seriously social animal? Maybe, like so much of our consciousness, it’s a simple unintended function; the side effect of advancing cerebral functionality? Or maybe there really is something to this thing called love?

In nature animals show all kinds of levels of affection and intimacy. Both tend to circle around the biological urge to mate and continue the line. Species pair up, mate, and raise offspring to maturity before everyone going their own separate ways. As social complexity increases, a variety of species have evolved to form more complex social pairings. Wolves, for example, pack into an alpha pair and betas. The alpha pair mates for life and the pack all takes a turn in raising the pups. Eventually even these pups might go their own way, start their own packs, or join another.

People, on the other hand, are the only animal on the planet to go the steps we do to reinforce interpersonal bounds. And we have some of the most complex and involved boundings on the planet. But is it just because of evolution of the species and our society that creates this thing we call love?

After all, can the love of pizza be really equated to the love of family, or is it all just semantics?

I’ve come to understand that there’s a real difference between the basic desires… the needs… and the more involved objectives… the wants. To live one needs to breathe, stay within a physical comfort level (shelter, climate, relative safety, etc.), rest, consume water and food, and expel the waste of that food. Those are the basic needs of every human body. We all have them, we all carry them out. If you don’t, well you’re probably not alive right now to read this.

However, to thrive – to meet personal goals – is a want. We say to ourselves that we want this or that in our lives, or to accomplish some feat or create a thing. Those aren’t required for life. But we feel the desire to fulfill them in an effort to live.

Love seems to straddle these. And I think this is the great mystery of love; that it’s not just a want, but also seems to be required for a healthy life.

Love fills us, forces us to grow, draws in new forces of life for change, and creates in us loyalties and empathies that enrich us as people. Love can bring out the best in us, give us direction, form communities, heal, and even combat the forces that might seek to undo us; either from within or without. Love gives us strength.

Love takes many forms. We feel it for our friends; showing it in comradely, loyalty, and in the way we open ourselves up to them as we draw them into ourselves. We feel it for our family; giving our time and support to those who have been a part in our upbringing, drawing from our commonality to bolster us in times of need and in times of charity, where we take from our initial concepts of the world and build upon them. We feel it in our communities; where we volunteer our time, energy, and efforts to share with likeminded or with the common interests which reinforce our dedication to each other, our hopes, and our dreams.

And then there’s Love; probably one of the greatest mysteries of the human experience. The desire… the want… to share your life with a special someone, based off a combination of factors that, at times, can really defy our understanding, baffle our reason, and ignite our passions. Of all the wants we experience in our life, Love – for most of us – is the truest, greatest driving force that can exist. What we do in the name of Love, both inside ourselves, and outwardly toward another, can be mind-numbing, humbling, and often times churn and mix us up in ways that both thrill and terrify. It fuels our creativity, lights our passions, and drives us like few things can.

     

There are still great mysteries in The Universe, of which – for the human condition – Love may be the greatest. It’s in it we find our greatest strength; sometimes in our greatest weaknesses. In defying our own logic and rationale it bolsters us and can rise us to new heights of greatness, both within ourselves, and with others. It tears down and builds back up, and makes us better than we could ever be on our one. It can surround us with the comfort of family, the support of friends, or the warmth of a lover.

It’s something I dearly hope… I want… to have again, someday.