Love

Yesterday, during what turned out to be a 10-hour shift of stuffing envelopes for one of our infamous mass mailings, four of us pondered love; not the kind of love shared among family members and friends, but that shared between two people who decide to make a committment to each other.

Elisabeth, the organization's consultant found it somewhat refreshing that three young women had faith in finding love and even that we had some sort of definition or grasp of the concept. She shared a definition of love that she recently came across. It was something like...love is caring completely about another person's well-being. Yeah, it sounds simple and all of us had some variation of that same sentiment as apart of our definitions. However, even in it's basicness, you really have to ask yourself what that entails. What does it mean to completely care about another person's well-being? What does that look like?

For me, I think of love almost as a triangle of sorts. The first angle of my triangle is loving unconditionally my significant other's strengths and weaknesses; and caring deeply about his well-being (e.g. physical, emotional, spiritual health and growth). The second is desiring to bring and nuture new life into the world with this person. And the third is being committed to merging and investing our money and credit together to build a secure financial future.

After saying this aloud today, (for the first time) I began to have this sinking feeling that maybe this is all wrong. Maybe its impossible to find love that looks and feels like how I described it. Maybe we only find one angle of the triangle and then get the other two by default. And if by default we get all three angles, is it the same as finding the triangle before the committment is made?

My friend Matt thinks that love is different things to different people obviously, but also, emotional security and compromise. That makes sense to me, but I am also realizing that this notion of love is constantly evolving within us. But can love ever evolve so much that evolves right pass you?

I guess I am wondering how do you know when you've found love? The obsessively compulsive logical thinker in me has a hard time accepting a response like: "you'll know when you find it." I am looking for some blueprint or some affirmative answer that I'll find exactly what I've mapped out! But I know thats just not how it works.

-M