“I was
always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my
fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. ”
Haruki
Murakami, Norwegian Wood
The one
thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give
enough is love.
Henry
Miller
Is that
song stuck in your head now? What is love? Good! I’ve got your attention now!
Now then,
what IS love?
I was
recently challenged to answer this question. Sometimes I get these requests
from a website or a magazine. Once in a great while, even a TV show. But in
this instance?
It was a
kid writing for his online High School paper.
And
somehow, that made me actually put some serious thought into it. He seemed very
sincere.
The Ancient
Greeks posited there were seven states of love-
Storge-
Love we have for our family and children.
Philia- The
love between good friends.
Eros-
Sexual Love. Desire. Can be all consuming.
Ludus-
Playful love. Flirting, teasing, fun, lighthearted love.
Agape- Love
for everyone. Selfless love. Self-sacrificing love.
Pragma-
Mature love. A deep understanding that
developed between long-married couples. Pragma is about making compromises to
help the relationship work over time, and showing patience and tolerance.
So let’s
start there. Love is family, friends, lust, play, and mature commitment.
That’s a
pretty good list. Seems like whenever I watch a show about ancient times,
everyone is either naked or killing each other. Not too much different than TV
about modern times come to think about it. But their list provides a good
starting point.
Jumping
forward into the 20th century, a psychologist named Robert Sternberg focused
more on romantic love. He found that there were three triangles to love consisting
of intimacy, passion, and commitment. He discovered that few couples truly
reach and maintain all three of these states, and the diagram below shows some
of his descriptions of love when a piece of the triangle is lacking.
And
importantly, he introduces the concept of intimacy, which Sternberg describes
as “feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bonding in loving
relationships. It thus includes within
its purview those feelings that give rise, essentially, to the experience of
warmth in a loving relationship. “
So good.
We’ve got a new player in the game. Eliminating the Greek’s family and friend’s
love, and combining it with our 20th-century additions, we now have passion,
play, intimacy, and mature commitment.
One
important component not yet mentioned is the concept of vulnerability. But this
can also be confusing to people. If we take the word vulnerability at its
standard definition, we read, “The quality or state of being exposed to the
possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.
That
doesn’t sound so good, does it? Love can go wrong. Make us hurt. Leave us
feeling too exposed and helpless. Perhaps the best description of this helpless
feeling comes from Neil Gaiman, who writes,
“Have you
ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens
your chest, and it opens up your heart, and it means that someone can get
inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this
whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no
different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give
them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like
kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love
takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in
the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be
friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter
working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not
just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real
gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that.
Especially not love. I hate love.”
Woah! Do I
really want to feel something that “turns into a glass splinter working its way
into your heart?” That sounds painful!
But perhaps
there is another side to vulnerability. The wonderful teacher and writer Brene
Brown describes vulnerability as, “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.”
But also
that “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage,
empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and
authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more
meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
So that
sounds pretty amazing, I would strongly encourage anyone to watch the following
video if they would like to learn more about this beautiful woman and fantastic
concept. It could be 20 minutes that changes your life.
But back to
our list. Now we have passion, play, intimacy, mature commitment, and
vulnerability. It’s a fine list, and one that I think most people would do very
well to embrace.
But just
one more thing.
One of the
best things I've ever read about love wasn’t from a psychologist or romantic poet,
but from a Hasidic Jewish man who didn’t know his wife very well when they got
married. He had all the requisite butterflies during their brief courtship and
thought he had found the Ben Affleck, romantic comedy, happy ever after he was
looking for.
But he was
wrong. That wore off pretty quick. It often does.
What he
discovered was that love wasn’t a feeling or an emotion so much as it was an
action that we need to revise and update continually. Very much a verb and not
a noun. Here is his article for your further consideration. I think he makes an amazing point that love is neither fixed, stagnant, or a feeling. He discovered that for him it was all about the action and revision.
So in our
final tally of what love is, we have passion, play, intimacy, mature
commitment, and vulnerability that we need to manifest through action and revise and continue to work at throughout our lives.
That’s as good
as I can do today kid. I’m not even sure you’re asking the right person. I’ve
been messing this up since the other guys nominated me for “best kisser” on
Valentine’s Day when I was six.
But
Godspeed on the battlefield.
