What is Love?

… Baby don’t hurt me…. Those who remember the 90’s will get the pun, but this is a question that has been occupying my mind for decades. (It shocks even me that I have earned the right to say that, I certainly don’t feel that old)

There are little concepts so laden with convention than love. And yet there are so many different – and often conflicting - conventions around it. For the religious under us, there is the Love of God, which I would hesitate to describe in great detail lest I start a religious war, but which typically is characterised by determination in the face of struggle. In good times or hardship, we turn to God with Love. It is a love with strong and pure intent.

So how come something like religious war, and religious killing/sacrifice are possible? ?And how come we can get so disappointed in our God? ?(Something even Mother Theresa famously experienced) This is where the difference between intent and feelings on one side and actions on the other, comes in. I will leave that comment here for now, to return to it later.

Next to religious love, there is filial and parental love, where you love a child or a parent. This is where fabled stories of a mother’s (never a fathers, heavens no) love or a child’s love come marching in. These stories create a strong convention that a parental love is unconditional. With as a result that many budding parents shoot into depression when the realize that occasionally they want to strangle their children. Fortunately, most of us don’t put these thoughts into words.

Then there is romantic love. Perhaps the most inspiring?forms of all, muse to all of the art forms. For years I thought I wasn’t very good at it; I had many relationships and was married twice. While there are many ways to give shape to romantic love and the dominance of Marriage as the predominant form of commitment to romantic love has subsided somewhat, the vast majority of people still see this as the only right way forward in love. They promise to love each other in good and in bad times. Expectation is that the loving feelings towards each other last. Yet we feel really guilty when for the first time we wished our partner disappeared to the north pole. After a while this frustration may replace the loving feeling altogether and we take up fishing (men) and pole dancing (women) as a way to occasionally get away from their loved one. Still, many make the effort on a daily basis to treat each other with kindness and respect.

This is by no means an exhaustive typology of Love, but enough to let a pattern emerge when you take a step back: Loving feelings are not constant. They come and go. Regardless whether it is for our Gods, family, spouses, pets or besties. We should embrace that without judgement, since we don’t control what feelings arise. Lets judge ourselves by what we DO control; our actions. And most of us usually do acts of Love, even if we sometimes fall out of Love temporarily. We often still make breakfast for our spouse, tuck in our child at night, say our prayers (even if we may at times wonder if God is listening).

So can we not agree that Love is an ACTING, not a FEELING? Rather than to hang ourselves by the utopian concept of everlasting, omnipresent emotion called Love, lets celebrate our acts of Love. By that standard, we are more likely than not a pretty loving and kind person. Now give yourself a big hug.