love

Love. Love, love, love. What is it? and what does it mean? Many have tried to find the answer, and not one of them has come up with an answer that I particularly like. Screw you, scholars of the world, for today, I will find my own definition.

First, I think of parental love. The love that you feel for your parents, even if they do you wrong. The kind that binds you to them, which is probably more a symptom of being born than anything else, it just exists. And once it leaves, it doesn’t ever come back again. So, is that love? I don’t think so. It’s something else entirely, something that can’t ever be replicated in any single meaningful way, so why do we even pretend it is the same as love? Or is it just a type of love, and am I being a pendatic little shit? I’m not sure. But it is very different, I’m sure of that.

Is it then, the completely overwhelming love for a child? Those who we want so dearly to have a good life that when they do wrong to themselves or others we can consider hurting them oh so deeply, just because we hope it changes them for the better? I’m not sure that is love either. Should anything so positively seen as love ever include such painful things? Of course we all know that love is pain, and that it is never easy to love or to be loved, but nonetheless, surely the description of love itself shouldn’t include pain. Just like there is no heat without cold or light without dark, there can be no love without pain, but they are different entirely.

So then, considering that’s not it either, is it the love for a pet? Is that the love I seek to describe from which all other forms of love arise? I’m not so sure either. Although I love Pino more than I could ever really describe, and I am more than happy to let her little claws destroy my shirts, claw my open my skin, and destroy all the random objects that she likes to break in the house, if it came down to it, would I give my life for hers? No, of course I wouldn’t. But for one types of love, I would.

Finally, then, we arrive at that of love of a lover, with whom you meld entirely, possibly to the point of self destruction. But how do we even describe it? I don’t think I can. I have thoughts, but I dare not put them on paper, because I’ve been wrong before. Is that what love is to me? Something you can't possibly describe? Something you fear to lose just from looking into what it is too hard?

Love, is something you know you have, when you have it. More, I can't possibly say.