I wanted to write about love for a long time. Saying that it’s an important topic would be an understatement. It is such an omnipresent topic in our modern mythology that you may wonder what I, a notoriously single web comic and blog author, could possibly contribute to the matter. Well, that’s for you to decide but I do have some thoughts I’d like to share. Because I think the fact that love is so unhealthily misrepresented in our modern culture is not only the reason why I’m still single but might also contribute to the ever declining social cohesion in our society.
To understand what I mean, let’s first look at how love is portrayed in most media. It’s an emotion stronger than anything people are capable of feeling. It’s an open debate whether love at first sight exists, but if you’re with that someone you’ll know that it’s right and you’ll be happier than you’ve ever been. You’ll want to spend the rest of your life with that person. If you’re having doubts about that you’ve probably not found the right person yet. With the right partner, everything just feels easier. And while that initial high doesn’t last forever, if you have the perfect spouse you can stay happy until you’ll both die of old age. But if you’re in a relationship where you constantly feel bad, where you get into fights, where you just bring each other down, you just have to accept that your partner might not be right for you. There’s no shame in that, you’re never too old to find your true love.
You might not agree with all of that, but it does sound familiar, doesn’t it? That’s what we’re being told love is and I almost vomited writing that. Not because it hasn’t worked out for me as some might try to claim but because it is so fundamentally wrong. To understand why I feel so strongly about this phantasmagoria, I’ll first have to convey my model of love to you. Keep in mind that it’s my eidon I’m talking about here. It’s fine if yours is different. But if you want to understand the way I feel, you need to understand the way I understand love.
And I think that the most fundamental mistake everyone makes is that they put love into the completely wrong category. It is not an emotion, it is a skill. Think about all those incredibly different feelings we associate with human relationships. The joy of discovering something new, the feeling of being protected or the responsibility of having to protect, the cute little surprises, but also the fear of being rejected, the anger at potential rivals and the sadness of having to spend time apart. How does one emotion called “love” fit that picture? Doesn’t it make more sense if love is your ability to deal with all of this? Isn’t it much more logical that the way you navigate this rough emotional landscape together should be called love? Love is an activity that requires active participation and proficiency.
This is the second way in which I see love misrepresented in the media as it seems much too passive. Your ability to love, like any other skill, can be practiced and improved. And while improving your skills does not always require an active process, just thinking you’ll be magically good at it never improves anything. When people run into problems in a relationship, they rarely see it as an opportunity to grow. Instead they suppress it, seek distractions or invent escape routes. And “it’s the other person’s fault” is always such a convenient escape route. When people try to make it work they do it because they want the result, not because that’s literally what you always have to do. They try to select people who it’s going to be “easy” with, not knowing that everyone is difficult in their own way.
Speaking of selection, another misconception people have is that love is just for that special someone. But your ability to love affects any relationship you might have to other people, not just those you think of as potential mates, not just your peers, anyone. When a good friend hurts you, your ability to resolve the situation so that both of you can grow from it is nothing but your ability to love your friend. When a colleague makes your job more difficult, your ability to sit together with them and find out how you can both make each other’s job easier is nothing but your ability to love your colleague. Even when a complete stranger on the street annoys you, your ability to be understanding and not escalate the situation is nothing but your ability to love that stranger. Your ability to love is one of the most versatile skills you can possess.
Which brings me to the final misconception about love I want to address in this blog post and that is that it’s rare. It doesn’t have to be. As illustrated earlier, love can be omnipresent if people really want it. But because they think love is that magical force of nature that will come to them when the time is right, they don’t know they want it. Which finally leads me to how I’m feeling about all of this.
Of course I’m sad about not having found someone for myself. That is partially because everyone I tried to date thought I wasn’t “the one” for them, but a certain abyss might have more to do with it. The fact that I constantly refuse to play the game the way everyone else does further complicates matters. But that is not why I wanted to write about love today. I wanted to bring this up because of how hopelessly underdeveloped the ability to love is in so many people I meet. Can you imagine how different our world would be if what I just told you was the general model people have of love and not that made up bullshit I presented to you earlier? It might fit a few situations that make for particularly good stories but it doesn’t fit reality. And isn’t fitting reality what building a good eidon is about?
So please, I’m on my knees begging you, love each other. Try to become better at it. Of course it is difficult, learning any skill is. But I promise you will never regret learning this one.
