Love is not lust.
If you and me really were nothing but mammals, then we wouldn’t feel so empty after a one night stand.
Is Love Natural?
Various religions refer to the relationship between mother and child as proof of love’s existence. We all have mothers, so it’s the most easily relatable and occurs the earliest for all of us. But to claim something like, “love is as natural as that of mother and child” would be a stretch. Not all mothers love or are capable of love.
I remember a nature documentary featuring this pre-historic bird with dinosaur eyes bringing sustenance home to her two offspring. The bigger sibling would always eat the smaller one’s lunch. No matter how loud or how often the poor bird cried out to its mother, she had only one response: a cold stare from fierce, contemptuous eyes.
I may be reading human emotions into this, but even if whatever instinct the birds felt in keeping their offspring alive could be called love, it was clear that it only went so far. In the brutal wilderness from whence we came, recognizing that you can only do so much goes a long way to ensuring that some small part of what we love survives.
Is Love Truly Unconditional?
The birds didn’t think so. Momma bird’s love only extended so far as bringing the food, not in ensuring that all are equally fed.
Amongst humans, you might say that war is the closest we come to a state of nature. Long considered love’s opposite, it washes away our empty professions of love and forces us to choose. Who do you love more? Most? What will you sacrifice for love?
Spartan fathers who deemed their babies unworthy would have them thrown from mountaintops. At first glance, this seems appallingly cruel, even for the dino birds. An example of the evils of toxic masculinity. You can hear the rumble of the stereotypical bearded patriarch as he roars: In a state built for war, there are no resources to be spared for those who can’t help themselves.
But in a tragic way, these dads were being kind.
The Spartan state was in constant war, the entire city had only two classes: military or slave. If you weren’t fit for the former then your position was in the latter. David Graeber’s great book, Debt, explains how for the ancients to be a slave was worse than being dead, it made you a living coward. No parent could want that for their child, but without access to an ultrasound, they had no way of determining whether to abort. This was the next best thing.
Spartan women were also the freest of all during classical antiquity. They could own property and divorce their husbands. But it was much rarer than today, suggesting that they saw childrearing no differently than the men did, trusting them to make the call. And they really did tell their husbands leaving for war, “Come back with your shield, or on it.” Those are the conditions of Spartan love. Based almost entirely on what can you do for your country. Not very romantic by our standards, but brutally true.
Stripped of all sentimental delusion, love is about one thing: service.
Love means never having to say show you’re sorry.
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry” is the pseudo-profound line from the unforgettably stupid 70s movie titled, of all things, Love Story, starring terrible husband and worse father, Ryan O’Neal. The plot is unmentionably manipulative and pure Hollywood fantasy*, but I think I’ve figured out how to fix the quote: Love means never having to say you’re sorry, because boy will you have to show it.
A half-joke.
But if you really think about how we were able to make it to a world with so many comforts that we clog our hearts and blindfold ourselves with saccharine platitudes, you’ll realize that you can’t get here without people who, when it came to matters of love, showed instead of told.
It took thousands, if not millions of years to get to figures like Siddhartha and Jesus, who chose showing love as their guiding principle. They worked out that this was the way to improve everyone’s chances of survival, and also to hack our own brains out of the misery and suffering of a life where everyone acts out of self interest and then later comes to feel terrible about it.
Few of us are at the level of the enlightened, but we have to start somewhere. Take responsibility for the people who matter, be they children, spouses, or parents, and act without ostentation. True love lies in giving, in doing your part without expecting anything in return. And it lies in being grateful for the help and service of others who you know could so easily have given nothing more than a cold, prehistoric stare.
Love requires sacrifice.
Now that many in my peer group have families, I see this among the friends who’ve had falling outs. Those who need patience for their spouses and children find they have much less of it for friends with pre-family expectations. If you want to keep a friend, recognize there’s only so much leftover love to give and only ask for what you really need.
Above all, don’t whine. It’s hard enough overcoming the base instinct to respond to those in need with nothing more than a cold reptilian stare without also having to contend with its accompanying baby bird screeching.
Because there are only ever two survival strategies: one where we all sacrifice to make each other’s lives easier, and the other where we force others to make sacrifices for us.
The bigger bird may have won out in the nest, but it’s the social mammals whose love conquered all.
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*Seriously, the plot was so implausible that even the creators knew that the only way they could make the whole dumb romance between the two lovers with nothing in common work is if SPOILER ALERT: one of them died before they could have kids.
It’s a peculiar modern habit that we question what we know best and doubt what we want most. I agree with you, and yes, love takes work and sacrifice. But it is natural and the best part of being human.
love this bit: love means having to show your sorry. also reminds me of something evolutionary scientist call: costly signaling or "honest signaling". Actions > words