Dear Anonymous,
It seems I always come back to this subject, perhaps because it is so potent. I don’t think it is just me, who considers love of any kind, one of life’s biggest mysteries. One of life’s greatest treasures. Certainly the way it has touched my life has been influential, leading me down new paths to find people and experiences I may have never known. I think love is so big because loving requires a softening, it requires an opening in what might be called the heart space. I absently wonder, why love has become so connected with this particular organ? Is it because of the physical feelings one feels while in love? A rushing or beating or fluttering sensation in the chest. Nonetheless, love seems to require a certain vulnerability, it means letting someone in, and in turn knowing them as well. I think this space, this vulnerability is something we seldom let ourselves concieve. Thus, when it appears in our life, it brings with is a new frame of reference, a novel way of being that entices us. Having someone know and accept you for all you are, of course that is great. Romantic love and otherwise. It cannot go without mentioning that love is also a lot work.
However, the substantial veign of my wondering today is on the matter of subjectivity. In knowing that the human experience is marked, even defined, by our subjectivity I wonder how love is different person to person. It is clear that there is some general consensus on what love is, or what it means. I say this because people don’t often pronounce their love for each other before they feel the other is ready. The approaches a different train of thought on the importance of the word and feeling of love as they are culturally and socially relevant. And we may consider whether ‘love’ is too reductionist. However, the mere fact that this experience and pronouncement is often tied to consent and reassurance shows there is some mutual feeling, some mutual display of love as we know it. Yet, this is contradictory in nature. It leaves me awestruck, the infinitude of human experience, the subjectivity. This concept of love, breaks down. If the way I experience love is completely different from another’s experience, how do we conceive to understand this variable, dynamic emotion? It is beautiful in a way, knowing that you are completely unique in your conception, in the way you physically, mentally and emotionally manifest your love. Yet, terrifying in a way. Knowing that your frame of reference is likely distinct from the rest of the people in your life, as indicated by a case study in pop culture references in songs, movies and literature.
Think about it. Your human experience is a universe, the only one you know, rich and thick with meaning. The human condition entails that we all wonder about separate universes, trying to connect, needing to share. Your experience of love, of any emotion may be galaxies away from that of another, even galaxies away from your own previous experience. How are we to navigate any of this?
For me, love stems from three or four experiences, connection, vulnerability, intimacy and acceptance, respectively. However, these four things mean one thing to me which may be at odds with the next person. I guess that is the wonder of the universe, the ability to find people who share a similar enough experience, that allows you to touch, even for a moment in the shifting cosmos that is humanity. Human experience is often portrayed as fickle and redundant, but I disagree. In it hides the virtue of meaning and fulfillment. In it hides the secret of life, connection, why we must hang on to our vulnerability, so we do not let our short time expire, pulling us together, making us love. Driving us to see the value of our essence. Soon to pass, but not swift enough to allow us to break open, to listen, to learn, to accept the true nature of our experience. Love is at the core, it never left.
Always, with love
