Love is the most essential of our human impulses and emotions. We cannot survive alone as individuals or as a species. Because we need each other, we are hardwired to love. It's why we sacrifice, and how we discover our best.
Love is our purpose. Romantic love is impossible without understanding of and respect for self. Yet it is only by going beyond ourselves that we can begin to learn the meaning of love.
Love is boundless. Across time and culture, love is the central and enduring force. It is our common heritage. No matter who or how, you love. In this sense love may be the closest thing we have to a single human language. Through myriad expressions, love is the constant. Bringing us together over distance and time, love is the gravity of consciousness.
And yet, our modern world often promotes and portrays a rather shallow definition of love. The primal forces of lust and attraction are perhaps easier to represent and produce at scale. These are worth celebrating — they are certainly essential. But attraction is only the initial spark. Something novel and exciting that inspires us to embark on a greater journey.
Love is not the impulse to possess. It's the need to know and to be known. It's about relationship to and responsibility for one another.
From impulse to enlightenment
If love is our human heritage, why then does it seem so elusive? The preoccupation with finding and staying in love may indicate a problem with the models and tools we are using. Social and economic forces valorize individualism, the unbridled ego and a transactional approach to relationships. These are not problematic in principle. Competition increases efficiency, innovation and exchange. But when "me" and "mine" become central to how we approach and understand our relationships, the wheels come off. Love requires a different operating system — the ability to put our partner's wants and needs above our own. A self absorbed and short term approach is insufficient, ahistorical and unsustainable.
It's time to take love back. Now more than ever we need ways to cohere, to reach each other. To get outside of our heads. To accept and endure. This is a place to celebrate, to document and reflect. A workshop in which to practice. A temple that is built stone by stone.
I believe in the transcendent and devotional form of love. This is a polemic against the crass and callous. Do not settle for a little love, my friends, but drink deep. Knowing that love is messy and demanding. At times even seems impossible. We reach impasses where the only way forward is to surrender preconceptions and redefine our limits. Luckily, love also sustains and strengthens us. It can be infinitely tolerant of our stupidity, flaws and failures. Love expands our endurance and awareness. Let love make us light, setting aside defense and demand for a while to experience the freedom of vulnerability and wonder.
Poetry alone can describe the destination.
Only love can teach us who we are and how to live.