How to Understnd Love

Before I could write a word, I took some writing classes. The first thing I learned was “if you can talk, you can write.” I could talk. That led me to have the confidence to write … which I did about this and that. My experimentation took me to write some poetry and essays and eventually it led me to write my memoir, “Becoming Alice.” But one thing a teacher of mine said has stuck with me over the years and has come back to me often. He said the most difficult thing to write about is love. Love! It is what everyone wants. It is what not everyone can give. It is something which is hard to describe, yet many people feel. Now it seems to have become measurable. How often have you heard, “I love you more?” I guess that means ” I love you more than you love me.” How can you tell?

There was an interesting study done recently which was televised. I found it most interesting. It about a young couple who had recently become engaged and felt themselves “head over heels in love.” A brain was done to see if anything unusual would show up on the film. In fact, some areas did show some differences in color. This couple was followed over a several years and were studied again. They professed to be still very much in love. However, their repeat brain scan showed a dimished brightness in the areas which had been so vivd before. How about that? Is “love” then a physiological state of mind, or just a depth of feeling, as we had always thought of it? I like to think of it more as a feeling, even if it does change the colors on a brain scan.

And then there is this business of depth of feeling. “I love you more (than you love me.)” I think that could be true. I think that not everybody feels love to the same degree as the next person. I think some people may not even be capable of feeling love. Just as we are not all born with the same genetic material … just as not all people are as smart as others … some people may not be able to feel as deeply as others.

So often people will profess to be in love for alterior motives … money, status, admiration, subsituting their love object for another, etc., etc.

I like most people fairly well. But there are some whom I like much less and some whom I like much more. I think it is very much the same with love. In my mind, one must first have the ability to feel deeply; then the depth of that feeling is dependent on all the other variables.

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