 Dazzerg, posted
over a year ago
Valentine's Day is the day when love and lovers take centre-stage. For those who are in relationships it is a time to reaffirm feelings or else express them for the first time in a new way; singletons have a harder time but even some of those discover a secret admirer or that a love they feel is returned. It is a celebration of love.
Love is universal and so is Valentine's Day. Valentine's culture has taken hold in countries as diverse as Iran and Japan. On February 14th in Japan the onus is on women to give gifts of chocolates and flowers; a month later men are expected to return the favour on 'White Day'. Iran's government frowns on Valentine's as a Western import but despite this many lovers celebrate the occasion.
Unique experience
However, despite its universal nature we each have unique experiences of love. Pinning down a precise definition of the word itself thus can become a futile exercise in categorising the sum total of human experience.
A definitive definition of love is virtually impossible to present and any attempt is always coloured by personal experience and prejudice; to me love is a connection. Whether we are conscious of it or not we form connections with those around us, our friends, family, partners, and even sometimes fleeting ones with complete strangers.
Love, in its broadest sense can be applied to many of these connections; in some regards it can be considered a tie that binds us to other human beings. Most people would see the term 'tie' as something negative but the reality remains that humans are a co-dependant species and not just in a emotional sense. Ties and commitments become pretty much what you make of them. If you carry them like a burden then that is what they become but if they are enjoyed they can be a emancipation from loneliness too.
However, few of us would consider saying we love a street stranger. We thus separate, categorise and develop. In some of our connections we have little choice. We can't choose what circumstances and to what kind of family we are born into and they become our first experience of connecting with other people around us. Later in life we get more choice in which connections we 'take-up' and develop and which we discard. We can choose our friends and our lovers although the choice doesn't simplify our lives rather it complicates things immensely.
Separating all these different attachments can be tricky and hazardous. A common example of the sometimes fraught and contested nature of our emotional borders is friends and lovers. People love their friends as they would love their kin, in a platonic way. However, sometimes those feelings 'cross the line' and when that happens it causes a great degree of angst although the outcome is not always as disastrous as our fears would lead us to believe it will be.
A separation of physical and emotional attachments a growing phenomena; the spread of the internet is driving this; increasingly partners are concerned that their better half is having an 'emotional affair', that is to say they are emotionally intimate with AN other without a physical relationship. People are also declaring love without having had physical contact with the object of their affections too.
Lust v love.
So, is love just an emotional connection plus sex? Yes and no. No because platonic love is possible and can be as if not more intense than the love shared by lovers. However, lust is an important part of love. It is in no way shallow to say that you must lust after your partner, it is just a fact. Shallowness is reducing lust to the purely physical. Personality traits (for example, confidence or the ability to make somebody laugh) are very sexually interesting and important.
What we find individually attractive is different to what we collectively idolise. To my mind some of the un-sexist people are often society's deified icons of sex. Model's, for example, often have disturbingly vacant eyes something which turns me decidedly off. Generally we reduce things to a physical level because it is easier that way and impossible for us to know the objects of our fantasies on an individual level.
Loving somebody involves spending time with them outside the bedroom so it has to involve more than lust. It has to be about a desire for a person as a fully rounded human being.
Monogamy
It's supposed monogamous nature is one of the great love myth's. Why is it perfectly socially acceptable to love more than one person in a friendship sense but not in a partner sense? Truly loving more than one person in a lifetime is entirely possible and, although I have no statistical proof, is most likely the norm. Of course, complications are often caused by love's many splintered nature. Anything that is capable of inspiring great good is also capable of the reverse, of bringing out a truly wicked side to our nature.
I have told a few people I love them and meant it because each time it has been in a different way and for different reasons. They are different individual people and again here we confront the specific nature of being in love. Some may turn out to be more loved and more treasured than others but that doesn't lessen the sincerity of what I said in my eyes. As Shiloh, one of my ex's, rather flatteringly said when we were splitting up I am blessed or cursed -depending on how you see it - with: "an ocean of love". This is true of most people although right now with the world as it is you would be forgiven for not noticing it.
Sad to say but sacrifice is also an important part of love too. It is also a necessary part. Acts of sacrifice play an often inspirational part in human culture because to a degree, greater or lesser, it involves us overcoming our hardwired instinct to survive and preserve ourselves. If love was all about just the good times then it would not be half as treasured as it is. Of course, there must be those too but a view of love as just this; that it comes with no effort or sacrifice without obligation or responsibility, is not rounded but blinkered. Relationships and love are hard work. Another great 'love-myth' is that it is 'plain sailing' - even the smoothest relationship has occasional kinks and most relationships have occasional bouts of heavy weather. My favourite example of this is 'Hollywood love' - all romantic movies include an 'awkward middle' a time when the future happiness of the star struck screen lovers hangs in the balance. Of course, things always turn out for the best in the movies which is unfortunately where the parallel with real life ends.
Some would say love itself is an ideal and there is some truth to this but like most truth's its one-sidedness it fails to recognise the very real experience of billions upon billions of people who are in love. Day in and day out they express that love and feel it in a way which bridges the gap between our emotional universe and the physical world around us. No matter how many times people get burnt they keep coming back for more and that in itself should say something. Valentines Day is an occasion to celebrate more than our individual circumstances it is an occasion to celebrate one of those great things that cuts to the very essence of what we are as a species, something that makes us truly human.
Posted on 12 February 2007 @ 9:35 (London time) - permalink
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