Love

Love. Love is complicated. In one sense, it seems almost impossible to define. It can’t be seen, can’t be heard, tasted, bought, or sold. And of all abstractions, love seems like one of the most subjective, most nuanced. So much so, that it feels almost painful to limit it to one specific experience or feeling. Yet love is a universal source of happiness. We dream, imagine, and surround ourselves with it. I can speak of love only from my own perspective, which breaks love into two “types”. There is the type of love which drives us to preserve, nourish, and care, like the love we have for a brother, or a mother, a furry friend, or a childhood novel. Then there is the love which drives us to be passionate, to have desire and will – the love for ambition. When “I love what I do”, that’s the kind of love I’m talking about.

First, the love we have for one another, for objects, memories, sounds, and so on.

Having parents, more than anything else, is what has taught me about what it means to
love. When they are happy, they love you. When they are as angry as can be, they still love you. They care about you. They want you, more than anything, to do well, because your own happiness is their happiness. That’s true love. The love we have for things, people, memories – we know it is true when it drives us to obsession – when we love something so strongly that it becomes part of us. When we worry for our parents, whom we leave all too abruptly once we hear the calling of college, and when they worry for us, that is true love. Love is when the child feels as though a divorce has left an empty hole, when this failure feels as if it is one’s own failure. I once read a quote that described this perfectly: “Love is
that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” Loving is caring about something – someone, to the extreme. I learned all about this a few years ago.

Five years ago, I travelled to Norway with my mom. I remember that trip so well, because it was in this trip that I learned a lot about the nature of love. I also learned that loving something so much that it becomes a part of yourself, can be a painful experience. My mom and I were homesick, without knowing it. We had moved, because of my father’s job, to the United States and the visits to Norway had become increasingly rare. I thought that my excitement stemmed from the desire to travel, and get away from home. I thought it would be a chance to make some Norwegian friends, and an excuse to let worries about school and college just fade away. But when we got to my grandma’s old apartment, I knew
that there was something missing. Maybe it was the smell, or the empty mailbox, or the missing TV that triggered it. Maybe it was a combination of all three that made me feel overwhelmed by a feeling of loss. My grandma had lived here for most of her life, and it had been several years since she had moved out, and many years since I had visited. My anger, and sadness, all of the feelings of loss and frustration that I felt – they were symptoms of love. Because the fact is that I had loved the particular smell of furniture in the three room apartment, and the sunny morning when I would drink hot chocolate on the couch and watch Norwegian kids programs. I loved being a child. I loved my grandma, and I loved the traditions we had had. When the hot chocolate and TV had been thrown out, and the child had grown up, I could feel the sore that love had left.

That’s the kind of love we think of most often.  But love isn’t always what you would expect it to be. It isn’t always directed towards an object or a person. When someone says “I love what I do” its sill love, just in a different way. I believe that love can be for a way of life, an
outlook, or a dream. Think about the last time you tried to tackle something really challenging that had a lot of meaning to you. You knew how difficult it was. You knew that you were playing by a certain set of rules, and that the challenge was somehow bigger than you. But at the same time, there must have been something within you, pushing you to pull through. There must have been some kind of motivation, maybe the feeling of danger, or being on the edge of the unknown. There is some inexplicable passion – love that you have that drives you onwards. To me, that’s what it means to “love what you do.” Its love for a type of life, whether it be the adventurous kind, or the philosophical, and contemplation filled variety.

Love is a difficult beast to tackle. It’s a kind of feeling that can come at the most unexpected times towards the most unexpected things. But love is also the source of a lot of happiness and joy. I have loved a lot in my own life; I have loved the sunshine, the old doll, my best friend of twelve years, my parents, and the old cat that growls at me when I come home. At the same, I have loved in a different way – in living a life of pursuit and purpose, of waking up each day aspiring to solve the next problem or discover knew things. I guess, you might equate love with a strong passion. Regardless, love is beautiful and powerful. As e.e. cummings once said, “Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth
more first than sun, more last than star.”