What love is made of
What is love? What are its ingredients? What is its formula for success? These are questions that have inspired scholars and philosophers alike, motivating some of the greatest human creative achievements and masterpieces, from Dante to Shakespeare, from Cohen to Cave. My contribution here is only a tiny contemplation, one among an endless line of such contemplations, from the start to the end of humanity — a drop of rain in the wandering river of life.
Attraction — the pull that draws one in as if recognizing a deep chasm and falling into it all at once, where the power of gravity prevails before reason can respond. It is unconscious, erupting overhead like a cloudburst. It carries delight and electricity to the one whom it has befallen, even if unrequited. When shared, it flickers before either party has consciously acknowledged their choice. It can initially appear as fascination, desire, or lust, confounding the most mature of us.
Care and affection — the subtle dimension of small but powerful acts. The healing hand that appears suddenly to soothe the suffering. The pleasure that feels selfish but is always reciprocal. The attention that remains when all other eyes have withdrawn. The hand that meets one’s own when the journey seemed solitary. The kiss on the forehead and warm embrace when the pain has nowhere else to go. Its beauty lies in its endless manifestations.
Respect and devotion — attention held steady long after the novelty is spent, and the initial spark of electricity has transformed into a new kind of energy that tightens and stabilizes the entangled orbits of two bodies. It is neither vow nor worship per se, but the integration of vows into routine, and seeing through the eyes of another as predisposition. It is satisfaction by another — and only that other — where all other doors remain open — unforbidden to both — and yet both always choose their same-shared door. Exclusivity that is neither confinement nor imprisonment, but a unique realm known only to two, co-created and cohabited.
Unconditionality — giving that expects nothing in return, where the fundamental connection between two cannot be transacted or commodified. This facet holds nothing back, showing up without pretense or mask, to be wholly known without fear of judgment, ridicule, or rejection. Two people, their bodies and souls stripped naked, standing before one another, both saying to the other, “I accept all of you.” A beautiful and unparalleled dynamic only of partners who are able and willing to see connection as effort may live to experience.
Sacrifice — spending oneself never seen as loss. The give of surrender that is never extracted or exploited by the other, paid out in presence and in absence alike through the grief and longing only love can create, across unimaginable distances and extraordinary circumstances. Of all the facets, this is the one where both parties willingly give of themselves in ways the outer world never sees, where joy and sorrow, togetherness and loneliness, contentment and longing are all one and the same.
Love may or may not be universally experienceable, but each experience of love is unique to the those involved — a special and specific dynamic they create by the nature of who they are and the energy born between them — appearing differently between what others outwardly see and what the partners experience inwardly, inside and in-between. The world sees two people sitting across a cafe table from one another, but hidden from sight is the realm shared between them, a whole universe only the two of them can enter.
Notes:
This post may not look it, but its writing took nine months of patience and discipline. Love must be lived before it can be written.
Love is itself a bond, but not bondage — one that frees rather than shackles. Not two halves forming completion, but two wholes choosing something more in each other — interdependence rather than dependence, domestication rather than adventure, contentment rather than euphoria.
By D. Bowman | Nomina Numina is a journal of my reflections, moments, and meaning-making between worlds. Reply by email.