Love can be discussed in an infinite number of ways. One way I have found interesting is by considering the opposite of love. The opposite of love is not hatred or malice, it is apathy. It is disinterest and indifference.
Someone you love withholding that attention is one of the worst things you may feel, and one of the worst things you may inflict on someone. It is a massive shock, and one that is met with denial. It is not like seeing the sun rise from the west, where it is a clear cosmic error that you can point to and blame. It is rather like seeing the sun in a cooler shade, in a hue that is not obviously wrong or scary to you.
It is wholly different to what you have taken as truth, but you cannot immediately point to what it is.
The shade of the sun may never have been something you knew exactly; you never thought about to what extent sunlight is meant to be orange or yellow or white. But when you realise it’s different, you realise that you did know the colour of the sun, and the warmth it provided.
That is why we ask each other about our days, what we had for lunch, how the journey on the tube was. This constant stream of attentive care is the purest expression of love. This devotion through the simplicities of life is what builds a record of who your partner is. How her laugh sounds when she’s embarrassed, how she looks at you when she’s content, or how she mopes when she needs a warm, homecooked meal.
To understand these things means you can always be there for her. You will join her in joy, comfort her in her sadness, and stabilise her in her anxiousness. No words will be needed. Love transcends language and is a form of communication on its own, but it must be learnt and built. Attention is the medium of love; stripping away attention strips away the ability to love, in the same way you cannot hear sound outside the atmosphere.
Love cannot be defined without reducing it with our human language. In that way it is also an expression of divinity. It is something to be experienced and not read about, yet it is so profound that we are compelled to attempt to explain it. Infinite pieces of art, music, poetry all attempt to express love.
There is beauty in knowing it will never be enough.
No symphony will ever have enough instruments. No painting will ever have enough colour. No language has the correct combination of words. None of them will ever have enough width or breadth to express the full range of what love is.
We can only try to get close.
