Love: a completely unscholarly, unscientific, unreliable and quite erratic essay

I want to begin by saying I don’t know anything about anything, but I’m a pretty good guesser most of the time. But not always. And what I think is true for me isn’t really probably true for anyone else, but might work in bits and pieces for some.

Now that that’s all cleared up, we can get started.

The other day, Jen posed a good question, a challenging question — or maybe it was mostly rhetorical — about interpersonal love: big love, lovey love… “Grand Love” (capital-G, capital-L):

Does it exist?

[...] Is it worth waiting to find and experience a Grand Love? Can practical love and passion be doled out in equal amounts and sustained in a relationship? Or will passion always fade into something more comfortable — leaving “just love” instead of a “great love” — making it an expendable component in the race to find a suitable mate?

(read the rest at One Wandering)

(*knuckles cracking*) Let’s break it down. Temporarily ignoring the looming question of whether Grand Love exists, and whether or not it’s worth waiting for, we should start with what we know. Or rather, I’ll start with what I know, or more specifically with what I know how to do, and that’s define things.

What is love? (Baby don’t hurt me) We typically think of it as a condition or state of being (to be in love). So is it the state of simultaneous conflicting emotions that indicates the condition of being “in love”? When one is “in love,” one typically expresses it to the object of one’s love with the phrase, “I love you.” When we perform a highly complicated analysis of that sentence — assuming that every complete sentence contains a subject, a verb, and an object — this is what we discover: “I” is the subject; “you” is the object; and “love” is the verb — the action. So, while “love” may undoubtedly refer to a state of being, it may be safe to assume that it encompasses a state of doing as well.

Can practical love and passion be doled out in equal amounts and sustained in a relationship? Or will passion always fade into something more comfortable — leaving “just love” instead of a “great love” — making it an expendable component in the race to find a suitable mate?

According to Wikipedia, we can divide the human drive to love into three stages: lust, attraction and attachment. The first two stages temporarily elevate the levels of the nerve growth factor protein — defining early love — however these levels return to normal after approximately one year. What does this mean? I don’t really know. Perhaps that, chemically speaking, it’s natural for lusty passion to subside over time, at which point we become level-headed enough to transition into a committed, permanent relationship. But whether or not “passion” can be sustained over a longer period, all depends on how we define passion.

If we define passion as an intense desire or emotion compelling action — ZEAL! — then, personally, I think the amount of passion one has for another would certainly lessen over time. Otherwise we’d simply drop dead of exhaustion. This is not to mention that if two people were busy being zealous-passionate about each other — always gazing into each others’ eyes, embracing, kissing in the rain, pining when they’re apart — they wouldn’t get very far in life. But, if — in the scheme of Grand Love — passion exists as something more akin to fervor, a warm and steady enthusiasm, perhaps *that* is sustainable!

But what does is mean to be sustainable? To be capable of being sustained? To sustain? To support, to supply with sustenance, to buoy up, to bear up under (Merriam-Webster). Does passion sustain itself? Or does part of the action of loving include the act of sustaining? Sustaining what then? Passion?! Harmony?! One anothers’ happiness?! Your bank account?!

These things don’t happen by themselves. They require supervision — kind of like owning a house. You buy it, you move in, you set it up and make it your own, you live in it for a while without thinking much of it, until you notice there’s a drip inside one of your walls. And the carpet under the living room couch is soaked through. And the ceiling is sagging on one side of the house because there’s a downpipe where a stud should be. And then the oven won’t turn on. And the dishwasher flooded the kitchen. And the ceiling light in the hallway is hideous. Do you wait for these things to fix themselves? Do you move out and find a new house? Of course not! You try to sustain it. It takes a lot of work, and it can be overwhelming and frustrating, but it’s worth it in the end. Because you fix what needs fixing, maintain what needs maintaining and enhance the best features. It’s your house, it’s a good house, and it’s good because of the work you put into it.

I should note here that despite the work you put into this house, it may not be your forever house. You might even know this right from the start. But keep in mind that the lessons you learn in your not-forever house will only make you better equipped for when you *do* find the house that becomes your forever house. Owning other houses first doesn’t make you wrong. It only makes you better.

So what then of the so-called “Grand Love”? Does it exist? I’m certain that it does. But it depends on how you define it. Perfect love? True love? How does one know it when she finds it? Or is “Grand” something we earn over time, for a lifetime spent loving?

I’m inclined to believe that perhaps this “Grand Love” is more of a quest than a tangible thing — a search perhaps (but for what?), or maybe simply a journey, an adventure, two lives lived mutually (see M-W’s definition 3: “of or relating to a plan whereby the members of an organization share in the profits and expenses”). Or maybe it is the product of experience, and learning from experience. Of dual evolution. Two lives spent in a constant state of collaboration. Ahh! Now we’re getting somewhere.

Is it worth waiting to find and experience a Grand Love?

So, looking back, if we assume the following:

• that love itself is not simply a state of being, but a state of doing,
• that fervor-passion can be sustained over time,
• that sustaining does not happen by itself, and
• that Grand Love is achieved through experience,

we can conclude that the answer to this question is, quite simply, no. Because I’ve proved nothing here today except that love — in any form — is not something that happens. It is not something we wait for. Our lives — and our loves — are what they are because we make them that way. I’ve been married for less than 5 years; we’ve had way ups and way downs. And I’ll tell you the truth: during the up times, every day feels like Grand Love. The down times make you step back and question it. Redefine it. Work harder to make it. And *that* is something Grand.