So you wanna talk about love?
A few years ago I was working in Desolation Wilderness near Lake Tahoe. It was late fall and we were preparing for the next fire season. I was working with one of my favorite humans on earth: a man in his mid-50s who has lived in Tahoe longer than I've been alive. He backcountry skis wilderness most humans will never see and rescues fallen cedars for his many projects. It was election season 2016 and while we worked on clearing a particularly burly manzanita bush this man and I got to arguing about truth. He was appalled to hear that I didn't think there was such a thing as truth and that, in my opinion, what we believe to be true has much more to do with who is telling the story. We never came to an understanding but it led to an entertaining day clearing brush in the autumn air.
Fast forward—two years ago I was listening to a famous writer who shall not be named. She kept saying she wrote the truth. I got really riled up and raised my hand and asked something like, “do you mean you write your truth?” And she calmly replied, “No, the truth. There is no individual truth. Just the truth and I write the truth.” I was so noticeably upset another writer in class the next day asked me why her answer bothered me so much. I said something along the lines of it being culturally dangerous and morally reprehensible to claim to speak the truth.
While I meant what I said, it has become clear to me that even though I don't think it's possible to speak the one single truth, that doesn't mean I don't want to find it. When something disturbs me, when I have a question that plagues me day and night, I become obsessed with finding the answer to my question. The implication being that there is a single answer to find. And that it is possible for me to find it.
The first question that plagued me was what happens after you die. I approached this question with zeal and read hundreds of books, spoke to everyone and their mother, all the while hoping that that God herself would smite me with THE ONE TRUE TRUTH. Congratulations, Sammie, you finally found it!
Listen to my Love Playlist (I tried to tone down the cheese, but I couldn’t help myself)
This is what happened with my quest to understand romantic love. I wish I could say I was curious about this topic for anthropological reasons. But the truth is, love, like death, causes me anguish because in its essence, love is an unknowable force. I'm not a fan of the unknown. I want to find the end of the cave. I don't want to worry it goes on forever.
I wanted to know: is romantic love real or is it a societal fabrication? Why do we love who we love? Have we always loved? Is it human to love or do other species love? Is it possible or even desirable for love to last a lifetime?
I've encountered many obstacles in my quest to understand romantic love and while I was hoping to emerge the victorious hero with THE SINGLE ANSWER TO ROMANTIC LOVE—I can say that I have fewer questions and that feels like a win.
This History of Love
Also the name of one of my favorite books :)
There was honestly too much information for me to share and if I wrote it all down you all would be bored. SO I decided to make a video essay. It’s not edited—I was literally so lazy I didn’t even add transitions. Also the captions stopped working three minutes in…. SO—the moral of the story is—it’s not beautiful cinematography but it is a quick and dirty way to get you all access to my brain :)
I also wrote some notes that I’ve included below.
If you want to know where I got my information, here’s what I’ve read in order to learn about romantic love.
Sappho
Arguably the origin of literature about love in the west and she was a woman! And a lesbian!
You can listen to the experts say much smarter things in this excellent podcast
When the rest of the world was writing about war and death Sappho was writing about love as a force that can rule an individual. So = Cool
My favorite Sappho fragment is here
Socrates/Plato
TL:DR— To Love and the act of loving is to make yourself a more virtuous person, to know more and to gain more wisdom.
Quote that basically sums it all up: “ For Alcibiades doesn’t try to win Socrates’ love by undertaking the difficult task of self-transformation required to become a more virtuous, and so more truly beautiful and lovable, person. Instead, he takes the easy, familiar path of offering the physical attractions he already has—the ones that have earned him the approval of the crowd.”
Aristotle
TL:DR— he literally says life is not worth living without love.
There are 3 types of love: One for utility, one for pleasure and then true love.
True love is active and not passive, it must be performed as a work and you cannot love someone you do not live with because if you do not live with them you are not sharing your life with them and therefore cannot actively love them.
Aristotle defines friendship/the lover and the beloved in five ways:
A friend wishes only good for their friend, a friend wishes for their friend to exist and live for their friend’s sake, friends go through life together, they choose the same things, they share in sufferings and joys.
Courtly Love
TL:DR— fun and playful but not how real people loved in the middle ages. Think Lancelot and Guinevere and Tristan and Isolde
You can read a funny medieval guide to love here
Basically courtly love was a tool to keep the people down. So=lame.