I'm not sure why some of life's most enlightening moments happen at the most random times, like when you're in the shower or on the bowl. For me, it's usually when I'm taking a walk, and this weekend was no different.
"What is love?" Nina asked me as we picked up our pace on the trail.
Immediately, Haddaway's 1993 song popped into my head, the one that asks the same thing. and then tacks on "Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.
Well,
that's not it, I thought.
And it certainly isn't that stupid refrain from "Love Story," "Love means never having to say you're sorry," because you
always need to apologize if you've messed up � especially to the ones you say you love. I'm not so sure it's Sting's grammatically incorrect proclamation, "If you love somebody, set them free," either.
But it kind of stumped me. I mean, I know what love feels like because I've experienced it a handful of times in my life, although I know there have been many times when I confused lust for love. And even though I am rarely at a loss for words, I'm not so sure I can articulate what love is without sounding like a bunch of bad Hallmark cards.
I once sent this quote from Erica Jong to someone I was falling in love with because it resonated with me �
"Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it ... It really is worth fighting for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more." But still, it doesn't quite answer the question, does it?
When I came upon this quote from "Captain Corelli's Mandolin," I sent it to him as well:
"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew toward each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."
In many ways, I view love in the way that Supreme Justice Potter Stewart tried to describe porn and obscenity � I know it when I see it. Or, more accurately, I know what it's not by what I see. Like, I don't understand how people who claim to love each other put each other down, or treat each other with contempt or disrespect. This is love? I think not!
But one thing I do know � love doesn't limit, it expands. It doesn't exclude, it includes. It demands you to be open to more, not less.
And when you lose it, well, perhaps Haddaway was right after all. According to Dr. Helen E. Fisher, research professor at Rutgers University's Center for Human Evolutionary Studies and author of books such as "Why We Love" and "Anatomy of Love," those rejected in love are <a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2265876.ece">"in physical as well as psychological pain."</a>
And who hasn't experienced
that?
How do you describe love?
Kat Wilder's My So-Called Midlife 
