It’s very human to love, so here is a definition by Artificial Intelligence: 'Love' is a complex and multifaceted emotion that can take many forms. It’s often described as a deep affection or connection to someone or something. Love can exist in various relationships, such as romantic partnerships, friendships, familial bonds, and even connections to activities or places.
And, as that definition embeds the capacity for nuance, love has been defined and redefined through the ages by both lovers and intellectuals. A through line of understanding can be found upon the word being brought up. Interpretation relies on cultural context and is often rooted in our first experiences of love. Many individuals define love as knowing, but the real question is, is love about knowing or seeing? Is it active or idle? Does it rely on isolated experience or expression?
These questions are different for everyone but depend on the recognition of the other. A question that arises is how does the distortion of the other invalidate the existence of love?
As my friend says, “Being loved means being seen at an incredibly deep level,” but is that not just attention? This is not to undermine the importance of attention, as Simone de Beauvoir famously says, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” But is attention love? I don’t believe so. I’d argue consumerism has impacted our views on love, as to see is to consume. Content, stimulation, and to know and to be defined is to cease to exist. Individuals may be predictable, but that calls into question: Are we our words? Are we our habits? Or are we ourselves?
David Finch once said (and I am paraphrasing) about the closure of a series or film, to understand the film, “the moment we get closure, the [film] ceases to exist in our minds.” Our attention, our curiosity vanishes because we have consumed it. Even the wisest of us are doomed to the redundancy of attention, not to mention the burden it places on us and our partners to always see.
We only see what people show us, and even then, it is cast by a film of what we are indoctrinated to think about them. We cannot expand the prison of cultural context because we are being fed identities from every aspect of our life that inform our impressions of individuals. Who we see is a collage of who we are told to see, who we want to see, and truly who we are ourselves.
For this reason, I believe love, or at least the kind of love that I regard highest, is curiosity accompanied with regard for another. Regard, as defined by Merriam-Webster, means 'to show respect or consideration for.'
This brings me to last summer sitting on a stranger's lawn with a friend. We were talking about the dichotomy of love and lust. He thought they were one and the same, or at least that is what I took from his comments. Lust, as defined by me, is frivolous desire to see and touch. This, in no way, invalidates it as an intense emotional state, but again, it feels closer to Scopophilia, 'The love of looking.' Can a word define itself? The love of something is the consideration of it, even if only for oneself. The love of another, in the consideration for another, demands to look at oneself. It is no longer rooted in consumption but in cultivation.
The love of friends, or your love of friends, family, and romantic partners is the art of seeing yourself and improving for the consideration of something that can be and has the capacity of being affected by you—not consumed.
I am unsure if that’s the sexy answer but its what I’ve deduced or at least what I’ve deduced about the type of love I have a preference for.