Thank you for sharing the stories of loss. My husband died at 33, and I feel so alone in my loss sometimes. Reading this and remembering its all about the love was a really nice way to start my day. Thanks for writing and collecting for us.
I’m starting my day one here in Rural Australia, about to start a 500hr unpaid placement to complete my degree in Social Work. Thank you for the reminder to look for different kinds of love. Community love. The reason why I’m even doing this. What I value, what my practice framework is based around. Love, curiosity, compassion, critical thinking, and intersectionality.
Love is just chemicals in the way that a sunset is just ions. Why do we feel the need to reduce our love? Do you love your vape pen? True love is the rejoicing of the tide meeting the shoreline; the moon and the sun sharing the same sky; it is the clap of thunder racing after the light, rolling with mirth along the countryside as it struggles breathlessly to keep up. Love is a question that makes you stop and think. It is the way that wind wears down stone and the river rocks polish their neighbors.
I'll drop the poetics. Love is not chemicals, but it IS a basic infinitesimal component part of who and what we are as living creatures, affirmed and strengthened every time we think of one another and act in kindness. It is a habitual act of trust every moment. When you believe yourself better than someone, you cannot love them. When you believe yourself worse, you cannot be loved BY them. Loving one another means we speak hard truths and soft falsehoods. You tell someone they are the only person to ever make you laugh this hard, but you also tell them that the way they snap at you in frustration is tearing you apart. This also means, you listen when they tell you that you are the person they've always dreamed of, and you listen when they tell you that if you don't put away your belongings they cannot function.
Calling love just chemicals is less damning of love than it is a damning of our current spiritual poverty and isolation from one another. How can we "love thy neighbor" when we don't even know thy neighbour?
Love is active. Love is choosing kindness and compassion and empathy. For others and also for yourself. It’s believing in the realness and the safety of it. It’s giving yourself and others grace. I believe there’s chance and luck in who we meet and love - platonically or romantically - but continuing to love them is an active choice.
love is chemicals because everything is chemicals. chemicals make up all of life, but that doesn’t have to be seen as a reductive thing. it’s actually EVERYTHING
Also it's called oxytocin! Put some respect on its name people! We have a biochemical mechanism for bonding with each other that took hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution to create. Idk about you all, but I think that's pretty special. It's just the optimist/pessimist on the bus meme again
Oxytocin being responsible for pain and bonding is so incredible too. From the contractions of childbirth, to every contact with that parent, then your friends, your lovers, your own children: every little interaction made deeper and more powerful thanks to oxytocin. We are all chemicals, but that’s what makes us *us* 💖
The world needs more loverboy content like this ❤️ I have a quote about love from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran tattooed on my palms in case my lovergirl qualifications ever come into question
I recently started reading All about love by Bell Hooks. Instead of defining how it feels when we feel it towards someone else, because we can mistake so many other emotions for love (limerence, obsession, cathexis, jealousy, admiration, etc) she tries to define it by what it feels like to receive love. And she boils it down to: "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth". And then goes on to explain that many of us have been in caring relationships (familial, platonic or romantic) where our immediate needs mightve been taken care of but the other person wasnt invested in nurturing our growth. Care is a component of love but we all have stories and know what it feels like when someone who shows care but we only feel loved when theyre invested in helping us grow. The statement of "I know they loved me in their own way" is at the core of this.
It often feels to me that when we focus on defining love by what it is when its coming from us, the emotions, the chemicals, we forget that its there to connect us to another. And often people feel that because theyre feeling this overwhelming emotion, the object of that emotion owes them some reciprocity. The narrative says love is the greatest connection we can bestow on someone else, with little thought for how we're acting on our feeling of "love" towards them. And at times this transactional entitlement can entirely blind us to how it gets in the way of the connection we hope would blossom from this emotion.
I could go on....as i said, its giving me lots to think about 😅
In this case the different angles of defining love - this seems to be exploring what it means when we feel it and bell hooks explores what it means to act on it, but also to receive it. And theres still so many other angles because we've super condensed a massively vague term that spans so much of human experience.
Love is relativity. It's found through relating to others, our relationships, and all that is related. And sometimes quantum entanglement happens, and the particles of kinetic affiliation teleport from the other side of the universe to bump into us and relate in a way that has infinite mileage behind it, that makes us love something that is inherent in space beyond our perception and too big to quantify into our lives.
"Maybe it’s just chemicals. Probably it’s chemicals."
It's for sure chemicals, but it's more than that too. A lot of things start as a hormonal or chemical reaction in our bodies; but it's what we do after that matters in my opinion. How we express our love, how we show our love. All of that is less about the chemicals, and more about the person.
"As an act of self sabotage[...]'
a kick in the throat would hurt less
Thank you for sharing the stories of loss. My husband died at 33, and I feel so alone in my loss sometimes. Reading this and remembering its all about the love was a really nice way to start my day. Thanks for writing and collecting for us.
I’m starting my day one here in Rural Australia, about to start a 500hr unpaid placement to complete my degree in Social Work. Thank you for the reminder to look for different kinds of love. Community love. The reason why I’m even doing this. What I value, what my practice framework is based around. Love, curiosity, compassion, critical thinking, and intersectionality.
Alex this is beautiful, thank you for sharing
Love is just chemicals in the way that a sunset is just ions. Why do we feel the need to reduce our love? Do you love your vape pen? True love is the rejoicing of the tide meeting the shoreline; the moon and the sun sharing the same sky; it is the clap of thunder racing after the light, rolling with mirth along the countryside as it struggles breathlessly to keep up. Love is a question that makes you stop and think. It is the way that wind wears down stone and the river rocks polish their neighbors.
I'll drop the poetics. Love is not chemicals, but it IS a basic infinitesimal component part of who and what we are as living creatures, affirmed and strengthened every time we think of one another and act in kindness. It is a habitual act of trust every moment. When you believe yourself better than someone, you cannot love them. When you believe yourself worse, you cannot be loved BY them. Loving one another means we speak hard truths and soft falsehoods. You tell someone they are the only person to ever make you laugh this hard, but you also tell them that the way they snap at you in frustration is tearing you apart. This also means, you listen when they tell you that you are the person they've always dreamed of, and you listen when they tell you that if you don't put away your belongings they cannot function.
Calling love just chemicals is less damning of love than it is a damning of our current spiritual poverty and isolation from one another. How can we "love thy neighbor" when we don't even know thy neighbour?
Love is active. Love is choosing kindness and compassion and empathy. For others and also for yourself. It’s believing in the realness and the safety of it. It’s giving yourself and others grace. I believe there’s chance and luck in who we meet and love - platonically or romantically - but continuing to love them is an active choice.
love is chemicals because everything is chemicals. chemicals make up all of life, but that doesn’t have to be seen as a reductive thing. it’s actually EVERYTHING
Also it's called oxytocin! Put some respect on its name people! We have a biochemical mechanism for bonding with each other that took hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution to create. Idk about you all, but I think that's pretty special. It's just the optimist/pessimist on the bus meme again
Oxytocin being responsible for pain and bonding is so incredible too. From the contractions of childbirth, to every contact with that parent, then your friends, your lovers, your own children: every little interaction made deeper and more powerful thanks to oxytocin. We are all chemicals, but that’s what makes us *us* 💖
Reading your writing every week reminds me every time how much I love reading and how powerful words truly are
and just like that- i’m swimming in love. thank you for gathering/ruminating/sharing these thoughts
“Romantic is not in the budget. We need to love the future first.” - god why am I so dramatic (ty for adding & sharing)
Welp I'm crying now thanks I guess
The world needs more loverboy content like this ❤️ I have a quote about love from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran tattooed on my palms in case my lovergirl qualifications ever come into question
The Prophet!! Is it from “On Love”? I hope to use “On Marriage” in my wedding vows someday 💖
This has given me so much to think about! Thanks!
I recently started reading All about love by Bell Hooks. Instead of defining how it feels when we feel it towards someone else, because we can mistake so many other emotions for love (limerence, obsession, cathexis, jealousy, admiration, etc) she tries to define it by what it feels like to receive love. And she boils it down to: "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth". And then goes on to explain that many of us have been in caring relationships (familial, platonic or romantic) where our immediate needs mightve been taken care of but the other person wasnt invested in nurturing our growth. Care is a component of love but we all have stories and know what it feels like when someone who shows care but we only feel loved when theyre invested in helping us grow. The statement of "I know they loved me in their own way" is at the core of this.
It often feels to me that when we focus on defining love by what it is when its coming from us, the emotions, the chemicals, we forget that its there to connect us to another. And often people feel that because theyre feeling this overwhelming emotion, the object of that emotion owes them some reciprocity. The narrative says love is the greatest connection we can bestow on someone else, with little thought for how we're acting on our feeling of "love" towards them. And at times this transactional entitlement can entirely blind us to how it gets in the way of the connection we hope would blossom from this emotion.
I could go on....as i said, its giving me lots to think about 😅
In this case the different angles of defining love - this seems to be exploring what it means when we feel it and bell hooks explores what it means to act on it, but also to receive it. And theres still so many other angles because we've super condensed a massively vague term that spans so much of human experience.
Thanks again for the thought exploration!
Love is relativity. It's found through relating to others, our relationships, and all that is related. And sometimes quantum entanglement happens, and the particles of kinetic affiliation teleport from the other side of the universe to bump into us and relate in a way that has infinite mileage behind it, that makes us love something that is inherent in space beyond our perception and too big to quantify into our lives.
Holding back tears on the city bus right now, thanks lolo.
"Maybe it’s just chemicals. Probably it’s chemicals."
It's for sure chemicals, but it's more than that too. A lot of things start as a hormonal or chemical reaction in our bodies; but it's what we do after that matters in my opinion. How we express our love, how we show our love. All of that is less about the chemicals, and more about the person.