What is love? - Brad Troeger

What is love?

Seriously, though, what is it?

What is love?

A verb?

A noun?

A universal truth?

An ideal?

A common thread of all religions?

A cult?

A neurological phenomenon?

There's no shortage of answers.

Some are all-encompassing.

It conquers all.

It's all you need.

It's all there is.

These are all comparisons, though,

ways of defining it by contrast,

by saying it's more important

than all other things,

but is it?

Sure, love matters more

than your standard turkey sandwich,

but does it matter more than shelter?

Or sanity?

Or an exceptional turkey sandwich?

No matter your answer,

you're just ranking it,

not defining it.

Another challenge to defining love

is we often try to do so

while falling into it

or out of it.

Would you trust someone who just won the lottery

to accurately define the concept of currency?

Or, I don't know, ask a guy to define bears

while he's fending them off?

Or is romance not like winning the lottery?

Are break ups not like bear attacks?

Bad comparisons?

That's my point.

I'm not thinking right

because I'm in love,

so ha!

Taking a step back,

or taking a cold shower,

whatever,

love is potentially the most intensely thought about thing

in all of human history.

And despite centuries upon centuries of obsession,

it still overwhelms us.

Some say it's a feeling,

a magical emotion,

a feeling for someone like you've never felt before.

But feelings are fluid,

not very concrete foundation for a definition.

Sometimes you hate the person you love.

Plus, come on, you've felt feelings like it before,

sort of in miniature.

Your relationships with your family

shape your relationships with partners.

And your love for your partner

may be in its own dynamic relationship,

healthy or totally weird,

with the love of your parents and siblings.

Love is also a set of behaviors

we associate with the feeling:

Holding hands,

kissing,

hugging,

public displays of affection,

dating,

marriage,

having kids,

or just sex.

But these loving actions can be subjective

or culturally relative.

You may love or be someone who can't have kids

or doesn't want to,

who believes in marriage but also in divorce,

who's from a culture where people don't really date

the way we think of dating,

or who just doesn't want to make out on the bus.

But if love is a thing that we can define,

then how can it mean opposite things

for so many people?

So, maybe love's just all in your head,

a personal mystery winding through your neural pathways

and lighting up pleasing, natural rewards

in your nervous system.

Perhaps these rewards are addictive.

Perhaps love is a temporary

or permanent addiction to a person,

just like a person can be addicted to a drug.

I don't mean to be edgy

like some pop song.

Evidence shows that chemicals in your brain

stimulated by another person

can make you develop a habit for that person.

The person comes to satisfy

a physiological craving,

and you want more.

But then sometimes,

slowly or suddenly,

you don't.

You've fallen out of love,

become unaddicted,

for a spell.

What happened?

Does one develop a tolerance or hit a limit?

Why do some lovers stay addicted

to each other their entire lives?

Perhaps to create new lives,

to proliferate their species?

Maybe love is just human DNA's optimal method

for bringing about its own replication.

There are evolutionary arguments

regarding every human mating behavior,

from how we display ourselves to potential mates,

to how we treat each other in relationships,

to how we raise kids.

Thus, some argue that the feeling

you think you feel in your soul

is just biology's way to make you continue our species.

Nature has selected you

to have crushes on hotties,

just like it makes monkeys

have crushes on hot monkeys,

and biology marches on.

But is that all love is?

Or, perhaps worse, is it just a construct,

some fake concept we all convince each other

to try to live up to

for a fake sense of purpose?

Maybe it is a construct,

but let's be more precise

about what a construct is

because love is constructed from reality:

Our experiences,

feelings,

brain chemistry,

cultural expectations,

our lives.

And this edifice can be viewed

through countless dimensions:

scientific,

emotional,

historical,

spiritual,

legal,

or just personal.

If no two people are the same,

no two people's love is the same either.

So, in every loving relationship,

there's a lot to talk about

and partners should be open to that,

or the relationship probably won't last.

Love is always up for discussion

and, sure, under construction.

So, if we can't define it,

that's a good sign.

It means we're all still making it.

Wait, I didn't mean,

you know what I meant.