Today I'm going to write about love*. I recently had the good fortune to be able to tell someone that I loved them. Specifically, I told them that I loved them, and would still love them 20 years from now. I've been lucky enough to have this happy occasion a couple of times in my life, and this person asked me a question I've been asked before: "How do you know?". Like I said, I've been asked this question before, and when I'm asked, I always just kind of sit there, stunned and stupid, which of course gives the impression that maybe I don't know, that I'm making it up. But it's really the opposite. To me, love is like the color red. I can get a can of red paint, and when I look at it, I might think various things about it, but one thing I will know is that it is red. Someone may then use that red paint to paint a sunset, or a butcher knife, and I may say that I like one thing and don't like the other, but what won't change is the fact that they are red, the essential red-ness of the thing. Love, to me, is like that. It's not dependent on what might happen any more than red is. So asking me how I know is like asking me how I can tell something is red. Which, of course, is hard to explain, because how *do* you know that something is red? You can change a lot of things about it, it can morph into different things, but it still stays red. That's not to say that you absolutely can't destroy love ever. If you work really hard at it, you can scrub an entire can of red paint off a wall; you can flake off every single little piece one at a time. But you would have to go at it tooth and nail, and even then, some of that red will probably still be sitting, somewhere. You could paint it over, but it's still red underneath. You can move away from it, but that won't change anything.
I have a roommate that dyes clothing. She uses these really intense pigments. She's pretty good about trying to stay clean, but still, that stuff is messy and it gets everywhere, and it's really hard to clean up once it gets on something. Love is like that, too. You can scrub it off one surface only to look up and find that it touched something else. You can carefully pour it from container to container, but damned if sometimes it doesn't just get on everything anyway.
I'm not sure love works this way for everybody. I don't have any idea if this is a universal condition or just something that happens to certain people. Maybe I'm just inclined to love. If so, I'm happy that I was built that way. It makes me happy to love. It's very far from a zero sum game. When I love people or things, even if they don't love me back, it makes me feel like a better person. I feel more connected to who I really am. It's kind of fun, actually. And thinking positively about one thing makes me think positively about others.
To some of you, this might sound really stupid or naive, like I'm talking in circles. But it's how I really feel. I don't love people because they are smart, or pretty, or interesting. I'm reminded of a thing that Neil DeGrasse Tyson said a while back (I swear he said this, although I can't find any evidence, so take that with a grain of salt). He was on a Christian talk show (he's an agnostic, sort of) and the woman asked him why, if he didn't believe in the Bible, he didn't just kill people all the time. And his response was perfect: you're scared of me because you think I might kill someone (he said), but I am way more scared of you because you seem to be telling me that the only reason you don't kill people is because a magic book tells you not to. I don't kill people (he continues), because I just *don't*. I don't even *want to*. It's not a part of me. Love, to me, is also like that. If you love someone, or something, just because it is tall, or short, or blue, or because a book tells you to, or whatever, then that is kind of scary; both for you, and for that thing or person. Because that kind of love could go away anytime! You'd be constantly worried that person might gain weight, or paint themselves green. You'd be guarded all the time. But if you can love something or someone completely, then you can lean into it, not worried that it might go away or change, because that wasn't why you loved them in the first place. Does that make any sense? I hope so.
*I went on an amazing hike yesterday, but tomorrow would be a better day for a travelogue post.