To You, On Love

3:35 pm. Tuesday, February 4, 2013. My Local Coffee Hangout in Poughkeepsie.

First off I'd like to thank those of you who continue to read my blog posts. I know it has been a while since my last post and while I'd like to make excuses for myself i.e. I was busy, overwhelmed, tired etc. the truth is we all make time for the things in our lives that we feel are of utmost importance. I will simply aim to be better and I hope that anyone who reads my posts knows how grateful I am for the consistency of your reading when as a writer I become inconsistent.

Now that, that's dealt with, I recently watched "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" and one of the lines in the movie has stuck with me for a few weeks. This line has to do with a topic I'm pretty sure I've been avoiding as long as I've been writing blogs. Love.

When I think about writing about love I'm reminded of some advice I received from my poetry professor when I tried to write a poem about the moon. She said to me, "Chelsea, don't ever write about the moon, too many people have tried too many times and it always turns into a sappy cliché that falls flat with your readers." Love is a lot like the moon.

Who can do love justice? As for this wayfaring philosopher I'm sure I can't.

The line from the movie that's been haunting me is "we accept the love we think we deserve." It seems cliché enough; I swear I've heard it before. The whole statement reminds me of that new-agey philosophy book that came out a while ago, "The Secret." Remember "The Secret"? It had the old-timey looking cover with the fake wax seal pictured on the front, and it claimed that everything we have or do not have is a result of our own thinking and energy bringing about the world we make for ourselves. I used to think it was complete garbage, I still do in many respects, but there’s something to that line "we accept the love we think we deserve." I can't quite say that we bring onto ourselves the love we have, as there are many out there without love that want it, and many with love that wish it would leave them.

All of this aside, love is tough. It’s tough to define, to explain, and really tough to communicate without seeming fake and cliché. Yet, I’m going to try:

Recently a friend of mine asked me, how do you know when you’re in love. Frankly, how should I know? What on earth, other than my tiny experience of being human, could qualify any definition of love I could give? And, that’s when it hit me… I think (but of course, take it with a grain of salt). Is it really about what we deserve at all? I proceeded to give my friend an explanation of this deeply self-sacrificing and rare entity I called love, I believe my words were “the willingness to give up everything you have, could have, are or could be, for another person.” I went on explaining how this type of thing is far from common. I said most don’t love. I said that if one were to actually love they could never give it up or fall out of it because it would be the most valuable and precious thing they’d ever known and at the same time will ever know, it is beyond money, and happiness and success.

Since I gave this wildly unattainable (and maybe pompous) definition of love to my friend though – which she wholeheartedly disagreed with by the way – I’ve given more thought to it. Perhaps love isn’t my crazy definition, perhaps it is something different, possibly there is no one true explanation but rather the desire to know another human being’s conception of love and manifest it in their life.

This reminded me of something else that another good friend once said to me (aren’t I lucky to have so many good friends). She said, “I think the Golden Rule is bullshit. Why should I do onto others as I would have them do onto me? Why wouldn’t I try and get to know how others would like me to treat them and do that instead? Sometimes people don’t think the same way you do and they don’t want to be treated the way you want to be treated.” To this day that’s one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever heard. I think it might apply here.

What is love? I could give you my definition but I think that what we are all more interested in is what is “I love you”? Just as one body alone in the universe cannot be in love, love cannot be defined by one body alone. Take it for what it’s worth to you, but maybe when we talk about what is “I love you” we are really wanting to know from another person, what is love to you and how can I be a part of making whatever definition you give a reality in your life. Maybe that’s the unselfishness I was hoping to convey in my original definition, but it was misplaced. The unselfishness in love, perhaps, is where I give up my own precious conception of love and what it means to me so that I can adopt yours and give it back to you by living it out.

Like I said, I’m just one tiny human experience. I get it wrong all the time and I long for love and cherish the love in my life just like the rest of you. That’s why I’m wondering this week, and probably for many weeks to come: what is love to you?