Human Connection

Credit: Author

I had a massive paradigm shift in my personal life this week, and so I’m going to be taking a less formal approach to my article again. I’m certain all seven of my longtime readers here are used to that. Apologies for being late as well, it’s been a trying time. Has left me pondering a great many things. I recognize that there isn’t a whole lot I’m about to say that’s really going to be original. I think I’ve just got a lot of emotions to get out this time, so you’ll just have to bear with me.

On Friday night, I went to see Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. 90% of people who read this will probably never have heard of them before now. But my grandfather loved them. And seeing a man up there at 90 years old play these songs that I knew my grandfather loved despite my grandfather being gone for ten years now made me feel so incredibly connected to the past. I am so lucky to hold this connection to someone who was very near and dear to my heart.

This and other events of the week led me to a big question. Why do we love? It’s a question that’s plagued humanity since there was a humanity. It’s beyond a simple desire to reproduce like it’s so often made out to be. For one, the Greeks recognized there were so many different types of love, and I think that’s shaped our understanding of the concept. But I also think it runs deeper than that. Obviously, everyone is different from each other, therefore the way everyone loves is different. And sure, we can break it down into love languages, and attachment styles, and all these great therapeutically charged words (not knocking therapy as someone who goes weekly) which help us clarify and classify how we love. And while I don’t want to say it’s outright bullshit, I think we lose something major about the phenomenon by trying to intellectualize human emotions, especially the biggest one.

I think we love because we don’t know any other way. As long as humans have had history, they’ve expressed affection for each other in ways that go beyond said pragmatism. People have followed their heart, often flaunting society’s conventions. They’ve written poems, and songs, and stories about it. Art of all kinds has been inspired by love of all kinds. Life would be so much simpler without this monster of an emotion that can make the worst of storms feel like the brightest of sunshiny days, and what should be beautiful days feel like the greatest torment we’ve ever felt.

From an evolutionary perspective, the idea of love makes no logical sense. Then again, neither do most things humans do. We are, by our very nature, an irrational species. Cold logic would dictate that the weak among us be killed, but stretch back to the cavemen, and you can find injured or disabled members of a tribe being cared for by the others until they die of natural causes. Cold logic would dictate that our alliances and loyalties be governed by expedience. Which group of people grant me the biggest career advantage? Which marriage partner possesses the strongest genes to pass onto my children? And yet, for thousands of years, we have made decisions that fly in the face of logic and reason to choose who we love. Even if society’s conventions keep us from being with them the way we like, we’ve seen gay couples live together throughout history dismissed by historians as “dear friends” or “roommates” when the evidence of their time on earth explicitly spells out their affection and devotion for one another. Love between different classes is so popular that countless poems, epics, songs, tapestries, books, films, and so on have explored the very concept. Everybody seeks their happy ending in some way or another. Stories of reconciling with estranged friends and family members make up a large portion of stories written. They are themes that resonate throughout historical record because they are some of the most universal experiences in every culture and time period. Where you find people, you will find love.

I think we love because we search for someone to see us. Someone to support us. Someone whose presence we enjoy above all else. There’s such a beautiful intimacy in the shorthand you develop with each other: the inside jokes and references, pet nicknames, and all the other things that make a deep connection between two people matter. To know how someone thinks and feels, sometimes before they do, is an incredibly heartwarming sentiment.

I think loving someone can take a whole host of different forms, and it varies depending on who it is. The way I reassure my mother is far different than the jokes I share with my friend. The nicknames I gave to one ex-girlfriend depart dramatically from the inside jokes I share with my brother. I am conversant in so many different people because of how I have gotten to know them over the years. Everyone we love in any capacity sticks with us. I still have phrases and habits picked up from paramours past. I know movies and music because family members showed them to me. I still cannot hear the song “Music Box Dancer” without crying because my grandparents had a Floyd Cramer CD which started with his rendition of that track, and my grandmother would put it on every time I stayed over at their house to get me to sleep. I immortalize innocuous moments of people I went to school with who probably don’t remember me now because I cherish the time I spent with relative strangers as helping shape who I am.

Sometimes loving people is good, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes, it comes from a lovely place and turns into an absolute disaster. I think the universality of love is tied to its irrationality. We hold on too long to people we don’t want to be with, we chase after people who don’t love us back in the same way, we are scared of trying because of how much we love someone and are afraid it might ruin the connection already there. Following pure logic, none of these things make any sort of logical sense. But that’s just the thing about love is that it doesn’t care about making sense. It just is.

Love is about supporting each other. About wanting to know all of the bad things going on with each other even if you’re not in the perfect position to help withstand the entirety of the storm. That you want to know even if you can’t help them deal with everything they’re facing. Nor should you. Being reliant on each other to that degree is an unhealthy codependence rather than the loving and strong cooperation required by a relationship.

There’s a quote by Oscar Wilde that I favor in conversation with my closest friends. It goes, “If a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. But if a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would move back again and again and beg to be admitted so that I might share in what I was entitled to share. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation.”

And I think that summarizes it best. When you truly love someone, you weather the storms together. Laugh together, cry together. Share triumph and misery together. You fit together like two puzzle pieces who were always meant to be together. That doesn’t mean it’s forever, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Too often we fall into the trap of thinking that loving someone should mean there are never any challenges. But I think it’s impossible to truly love someone if you have no challenges with that person. If you are never tested, how can you ever know if something is meant to be. And I think sometimes you can love someone even through complicating factors. In many ways, it’s more noble to want to be there for someone, with someone, despite all signs pointing towards negative feelings and outcomes. Love is a choice, and choosing beyond all rationality is a beautiful thing in my eyes. Even when it has to end, even when that end is painful.

And the bitter part of love is loss. But I’m a big believer in the adage, “It is better to have loved and lost than it is to have never loved at all.” That wasn’t always the case. After a particularly nasty breakup many years ago, I wanted to forget all about it. And as the years rolled on, I’m so glad I never did. I have learned more from reexamining old heartbreaks than I ever thought possible. I understand myself better because I have been hurt before and felt the blood from old wounds occasionally leak through again. I have been hurt again and again by the results of people I love and how our stories ended up. Some are for the better, others are for the worse. Some of these goodbyes are the most painful things I’ve ever gone through. But to forget someone I’ve loved is alien to me. It’s an abomination. It’s a horrific possibility. To forget someone I’ve loved, whether our parting was for good or ill, runs so antithetical to both who I am as a person and what I think love is about.

This was a weird article, I know. More a meditation on love and affection than anything else. If there’s a point I have to make out of this, it’s that love is a risk. It’s weird. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. And it’s still one of the best things we do. It’s a risk worth taking. In a world so thoroughly focused on darkness and pain and not being too obvious or following all of these weird rules that someone on social media tells us we must follow in order to truly love someone, all I have to say is fuck all that.

Go out and love people. Love them the way you’re meant to love them. Figure it out. Take that risk. Connect with others, and your life will be richer. Cherish those connections while you have them, because they will not last. If you’re lucky, the reason for the ending is someone’s death. But our time on this little blue speck of dust floating out in the universe is so special because it is fleeting. Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, and today’s world would be so much better if we all were willing to be brave enough to love each other just a little more.