Love: A Definition?
Quite some time ago, a person who loves me very much asked me to come up with a working definition for "love." I didn't have an answer for her. Poets and songwriters and old people know all about love, which is why they can write and sing and patronize their children when the subject comes up. I'm not a poet or songwriter, and I wasn't that old when the question came up, so I didn't have a clue. I don't know whether I have a clue now, either. But maybe I have a hint.
I learned this hint from Bruce Kuhn, who presented a play entitled The Accounts of Luke two days ago, and presented the sequel, The Book of Acts last night. Based on the titles, you might think that these plays were religious in nature. You would be correct -- but they are entertaining nonetheless, and I would recommend that anybody who would appreciate two nights of intelligent thought should go see Kuhn's shows if he drops by, regardless of your affiliations.
Having plugged his show (again, depending on whether my religious rant ever gets published), I should mention how Bruce and God figure into my definition of love. After each play, Bruce held a Question and Question (he claimed not to have any answers) session. During one of those sessions, he explained his relationship to God in terms of his wife. He told us that he trusts his wife and loves her, and knows that she would never cheat on him. He then said that he feels the same way about his relationship with God.
This confession got me thinking. I don't know whether I ever will have the faith to believe in God wholeheartedly. Even if I do end up believing, I don't know whether I would end up being able to initiate a loving relationship with Him. But then again, I never thought I would have to deal with the painful roller-coaster of being in a voluntary human relationship, either. I was thinking about these things, and I think I understood how one could live in peaceful coexistence with God (or Jesus, in this case) a little better. What struck me even more than the nature of Bruce Kuhn and God was the nature of love. Describing love in terms of the flu or hallucinations or lustful desires to copulate seems false to me. For quite some time now, I have been wondering how to distinguish love from infatuation from lust from friendship, so that I could figure out whether I had fallen prey to it. Bruce described love in a way that makes sense to me. He described love in terms of trust.
That, of course, got me thinking more. I tried to come up with refinements and manifestations of trust/love. I tried to come up with related attributes that could all come together to provide me with some definitive definition -- even if said definition would be dynamic, and only work for me during the very moment I thought of it. I wasn't able to do it. I came up with some attributes that I think are related to love. Here is my list, for what it is worth:
Trust: Bruce Kuhn was talking about never having to be afraid that his wife would cheat on him, because he trusted her. Whether that is a consequence or cause of love, I don't know.
Faith: I don't know how related this is to trust, but there seems to be a subtle distinction lurking around someplace. I think that trust is the knowledge that the person you love won't let you down, while faith is trust that the person you love is a good, worthy person.
Devotion: I don't think this is a difficult concept to grasp. I don't think that love (or true friendship, for that matter) can be a selfish state. When you love somebody, you are making a sacrifice. You are abandoning some part of your selfishness and forming a bond with another. If that bond is to be true, you have to give yourself to that person. You can't just live for your own needs and wants any more. The word "devotion" comes from "devote." To devote something to a cause is to allocate resources to that cause.
Vulnerability: People who are in love exist in a fragile state. It means exposing one's heart to another. We don't do that for everybody, I don't think. Being friendly and social is not the same as being in love. For example, I could be casual friends with a paperboy. If that paperboy was to turn around and betray that trust by making malicious comments about how stinky I am and how ugly my beard is, I would be hurt. But I wouldn't hurt nearly as much as if my best friend was to act maliciously, and I firmly believe that my best friend being mean to me wouldn't hurt as much as much as a person I love (I am loathe to use the term "lover") acting maliciously.
The closer a person is to us, the more we tend to reveal ourselves. My best friends know a lot more damaging information about me than I would be willing to tell you, my devoted friendly web-surfers. That's natural, and that's safe. I have seen people get very hurt when they make themselves too vulnerable to those who do not reciprocate the trust they show -- and the hurt is not usually caused by malice, either. In my experience, people have gotten hurt because the other party was too ignorant to recognize the damage their statements would cause.
I think that love's vulnerability is related very closely to trust. We are safer revealing embarrassing aspects of our lives to close friends and people we love because we trust those people, and don't expect them to betray our trust -- either unintentionally or otherwise.
Friendship: Stating this might be begging the question, as I don't have a watertight definition for "friendship," either. All the same, I have the strangest suspicion that two entities cannot truly love each other if they don't enjoy each other's company, if they don't relate to each other, if they would rather spend their time apart than together. I think those are all attributes friends share. But what do I know?
Respect: I sometimes wonder about the kind of relationships in which some people seem to be trapped. One party will ignore the other, or suppress the other's desires to speak, or call the other derogatory terms. Even restricting ourselves to human relationships -- human heterosexual dating/fiance/married couple realtionships, of you want -- I see all too many people who claim to be in love, then turn around and treat each other like dirt. They are so convinced that the other person has problems. They don't see their counterparts as being fully human humans deserving respect. That, in my opinion, is bad.
Altruistic Motivation: I learned this from Bruce Kuhn's Question and Question session, too. I learned that it might be possible for people to be altruistic out of love, as opposed to a complex series of rules that appeals to our desire not to be punished. To act out of love instead of fear seems rather uplifting, but it also has a downside. Is it possible for people to act unselfishly without God's intervention? Are people really brutish, selfish sinful scumbags at heart? Can we not mature as a global human society without having to depend on God? Can't we do good for the sake of doing good? I am not sure, yet.
Perhaps this point is related to devotion.
And that is my insignificant list. I still have questions, though. Do you have answers?
- Is it possible to love more than one entity at once?
- Why do people fall out of love? Can people fall out of love?
- Can people fall into completely platonic love?
- To what extent is love voluntary?
- How can a person tell whether he or she is in love?
- Can people who initially don't like each other learn to love each other?
- Can a person be happy without having any loving relationships in his or her life?