Love

For many years I have pondered the possibility of two different aspects of love, love as a verb and love as a noun. I would define love as a verb as something more akin to an emotion. We use phrases like “I love him like a son” or “I love him like a brother” which seems to define love as an emotional state with distinct feelings and relationships associated with it.

I would also argue that there is a higher form of love, one that transcends the emotional and becomes more palpable and beyond emotions. This love unites us all so there is no more “loves like” but only love. In this love state it is no longer just an emotion but a description of a constant thing, thus becoming a noun.

But I was wrong in thinking that love as a noun transcends love as a verb. I realized this when I started to see the bigger picture in examining our relationships with life.

We are not our emotions. But we certainly have emotions, sometimes very strong ones. These often govern our reaction to a situation. We fall into love and out of love. We get angry, sad, and happy. All of these are reactions to specific situations or relationships – reactions that we can manage how we choose.

Many people like to remove love from the list of emotions. They like to think that love is not a mere emotion but comes from a more “holy” place. Love gets romanticized and made into what life is about. Certainly I did this when I split it into noun and verb. But I see now that love is just an emotion.

So if emotions, including love, reflect reactions, what are we reacting to? I believe now we that we react to something very primal in our nature. We react to a connection we feel but then internalize and attach emotions to. For instance, one may not like members of their family, but almost always would help them it they asked. This connection is something we can’t define but just is.

If we could learn to not attach emotions to this connection, we could experience our reactions to people or situations for what they really are, not how they appear to us in our mind. This connection is truly beyond words. But I believe in order to understand it we need to “devolve” in our thinking. Our evolution with spoken language and philosophies have gotten in the way of many of our primal understandings.

If we could experience all things at a more base level before we put constructs around what we see, pull it up to our “advanced” mind and tie emotions to it we would discover an underlying “current of connectedness” that reflects how we are related to all things. This connectivity is not about emotions but about something much deeper, much more primal than even words can describe.

I believe by tying our constructs of words, thoughts, emotions etc. onto this connectedness so we can define it to our mind, we are prevented from experiencing life. So let go of emotions and reactions and try to see how the current flows. It isn’t an easy journey, but certainly one worth trying.

Connectedness to you all!!