Hey #040: What does love mean?
Can love be defined? Let’s find out 👇
These days, I’m peculiarly intrigued about one emotion. That is,
The emotion of love.
Before you jump into thinking that I’m talking about romantic love, let me stop you. By love, I mean every kind of love – love for oneself, love for the people you are close with, love for nature, love for life, and yes, romantic love too.
It’s not uncommon to spot oneself and others say “I love you.” But when we say or hear these three words in this exact sequence, what do they signify? Specifically, what does the second word mean?
What does love mean?
They say love is not a noun. It’s a verb. It’s reflected in one’s consistent actions towards the thing or person they love. I still wonder, is that all love is?
If I’m trying to define love only by the actions I’m taking, am I not making it difficult to be felt as a feeling? Maybe what I’m trying to accomplish here is to look for the evidence of the presence of love via my or others’ actions.
Btw I’m not questioning the need to look for that evidence. I understand that to build, nurture and sustain any relationship, such kind of evidence helps to experience the abstract nature of love in a somewhat physical form.
The question persists: What is that abstract form of love?
Is it some chemical reaction inside our brains? Is it a concept passed on by the generation of artists, philosophers, spiritual masters and sages? Is it a mystery that is never meant to be solved?
I don’t know.
I doubt if my mind has the capacity to understand what love is. Or maybe, it’s not the job that is supposed to be done by a mind. Maybe it’s only supposed to be felt by one’s heart or soul.
If that's the case, then my attempt to decipher the abstract nature of love is futile. I might as well replace the question “What does love mean?” with “How does love feel?”
It’s like describing how air feels on my skin since that’s the only way to experience and understand air for what it is. Similarly to understand or rather experience the meaning of love, I believe we have to feel it.
And it’s not that we don't feel love. We do feel love. But we feel it in our own ways. Henceforth, we give subjective meanings to love.
Though, knowingly or unknowingly we expect and assume others (esp the people we share close relationships with) to feel love like the way we do. Then to justify those assumptions and expectations, we get entangled in examining others’ actions towards us.
We try to figure out, “Are they doing it because they love me?” We try to test them, “If they love me, they will do x and will not do y.”
But if we remain focused on others’ actions, neither we can discover how love feels to us, nor we can realize that:
Love encompasses countless different ways in which it is felt.
So if we want to know what love means, we first have to feel it. In other words, we have to let ourselves feel love in our own different ways, instead of expecting it to be felt in the same way by every individual.
Then we can begin conversations (esp in our relationships) where we talk about those different ways of feeling love. We can ask each other, “How do you feel love? What does it mean when you say “I love you”? When do you feel loved?...”
Such conversations will not only help to clear our expectations and assumptions about love that we burden ourselves with in relationships, but they will also make us discover the different ways (other than ours) in which love is felt. And I tell you, that’s a mesmerizing discovery!
Additional read: Does unconditional love exist in a relationship?
Though, to have such conversations, you first need to know how love feels to you. So ask yourself, “How does love feel to me? How do I feel love?”
To answer these questions, you can recall memories in which you feel love. Did the feeling of love feel like the feeling of warmth? Compassion? Safety? Selflessness? Being seen? Bliss? Appreciated? Peace? Trusted?
Whatever the answer comes, sit with it for a while. Try to recollect more experiences where you felt that exact feeling that you discovered in your answer. Ask yourself, “Did I feel love in those experiences too?”
Doing this introspection a few times will tell you how love feels to you 😊
If you find it difficult to go down the memory lane, do this:
Next time, when you say “I love you” to someone or someone says “I love you” to you (not essentially in a romantic sense), take a moment and ask yourself, “How does this feel?”
In that feeling of love, you will find YOUR meaning of love.
🦋
See you next Thursday,
Ashi
(it me on LinkedIn)