What is love?

Baby don't hurt me…

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

Love. It’s everywhere, yet nowhere at the same time. Everyone talks about it, everyone wants it, yet most people seem to find themselves in lack of this elusive drug. Is it a drug? Is it a feeling? Perhaps it’s something altogether more powerful and permanent. 

Culture Shock

The love we most often see depicted in films and hear about in music and popular culture is the love that we grow up expecting and this is what often ends up becoming our definition of romantic love. This seems to be a very unconscious version of love in a lot of cases being both transactional and transitory mostly based on physical attraction and chemistry, but not necessarily anything deeper or more meaningful. It’s all about the ego fulfilling its needs yet not so much about unconditional acceptance, and therefore love, of the other. It’s more about getting than it is about giving. Don’t get me wrong, we definitely need boundaries in love as in all relationships, there has to be a healthy balance of give and take, yet the love is separate from all of that. 

Being In Love

Loving and being in love are not the same thing. People often confuse the two or misunderstand their meaning. Loving is a permanent essence. This essence is peaceful, calm, serene. It simply loves and cares for the other. That’s true love. Powerful. Permanent.

Being in love is what we often see in the movies. It’s the adrenaline rush, the attraction, the dopamine. It’s not peaceful, it’s disruptive (yet can feel wonderful!). This usually precedes deeper love, yet just as often it is a surface level ego based attraction. There is no deeper, pure, loving essence underneath. This will always be revealed in time. We should not glorify this phase, for it says very little about the substance that lies underneath the transitory feelings. Being in love, unlike love, is not permanent. It always fades and never lasts. Hopefully what replaces it is love, but often it does not. 

Being in love is like being on drugs (I would imagine! I’ve been in love, but never done drugs) it gets you high and temporarily it’s like you lose your mind. All intelligence and common sense can go out the window! Though it can feel amazing, being in love is not necessarily leading us to love unless we are consciously aware of our own unconscious attractions. 

One thing is for sure though. Regardless of whether it results in a more permanent essence of love, being in love will always be transformational. Falling in love is a common occurrence. It’s normal. True love, on the other hand, is a rare breed.

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

- Carl Jung

Thank You Next

Everywhere in popular culture and the media we are told what love is, where our power lies and what to look up to in others and society at large. Everyone wants the same thing surely? A deeply meaningful, loving, authentic and fulfilling partnership. Yet we behave very differently. Many go from one, to the next, to the new one. This has been normalised. People are quickly discarded and replaced, easily forgotten. Let’s remember that what is truly loved is never forgotten. 

If anything has been forgotten in today’s society it is perhaps what the true essence of love really is? Ego and fear have gotten so intertwined with it that we are almost shamed for feeling deeply. You are supposed to get over it already! Guess what? True love is not like that. It’s not something you get over. It’s something you hold in your heart forever. Because once you truly love someone, that’s not something that ever disappears if it was true love in the first place. You will always love that person and wish for their happiness, health and for all their dreams to come true. You’re not ‘in love’ with them, but the ‘love’ remains. That’s what true love is. Wishing happiness for the other and sending good energy their way when they cross your mind from time to time, even if they’re not a part of your life anymore. There won’t be many people who touch our hearts in such a way that we love them in this way. Yet once we do, it never fades. 

Shakespeare expressed the permanent essence of love beautifully in my favourite Sonnet of his; number 116:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Love Reigns

Love is a divine essence connected to our souls, our spirits. Ego and fear cannot coexist with love. What we see advertised as ‘love’ in media and in culture is so often not even related to the essence of love. It’s all ego and fear.

We must have the courage to be vulnerable and to feel love. It’s a wonderful thing! We must deeply care and respect for the other. When love is present, this is natural and inevitable. That is what love does. When love is lacking, ego and fear rules. We must risk getting our hearts broken because even if we do, the love we experience will transform us and bring us closer to the essence of pure love. 

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not perfected in love. 

- 1 John 4:18

Even if we have to let people go, the love will remain in our hearts. That’s beautiful and worthwhile. I would rather live with love in my heart than fear. The truth is we don’t need anyone else to love. We can choose love for ourselves. When we feel deep love for another, we contribute to the energy of love. That’s something. 

Let’s remember that love is a uniting, powerful force that we can choose. It’s a peaceful and permanent essence and it’s our true nature once we stop running fearfully away from it. Let’s accept nothing less than what we are. Love is the way. 

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If that made you want to listen to the famous song that inspired the title of this piece here it is:

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