Dear Reader,

Reader = Friend, maybe family or anyone silly enough to stumble on this page and not leave immediately

Welcome to my blog!

First of all, I'd like to thank you to coming to my production of "Not Your All-American College Kid," written, directed and performed by yours truly, Calen Winn aka thepanthespian aka Puck aka Pan-cake.

Before we begin, I have a few reminders. Please silence, not just set to vibrate as this is an intimate space, your cellphones, pagers, watches, and anything else that might beep, squawk, or otherwise make noise, including small children. Also, please remember to be courteous and kind to the performers and your fellow audience members, profanity is allowed, but please keep all comments civil and constructive.

Finally, anything new I write will appear as a blog post, but make sure to check out my "Pre-Blog Writings" pages, linked in the sidebar, which may grow as I discover more old writing worthy of posting.

Now, sit back, and enjoy "Not Your All-American College Kid" by Calen Winn

Monday, June 28, 2010

Love


So, I came to my blog to write a history of my relationship/crushes, but, upon using the word love in my title, I decided to totally switch paths, and give you this:

Love

What is love?

What will we do for love?  What should we do for love?

What do we call that place before love, but beyond just "like" or infatuation?

These and other questions of a similar nature have been floating around in my head for a while and even more recently.  To me, love is a feeling when you care for someone to the point that you put their needs on par with your own.  It takes many different forms.  With birth/step family, it doesn't have to mean you like them (siblings often don't) but as a general rule, even if they may not get along easily family members will still look out for each other's basic needs.  With friends/chosen family(meaning chosen siblings/aunts/uncles/parents, not chosen spouses), love generally is accompanied by liking the person a lot, and is, in my opinion, the basis of some of the strongest and longest-lasting relationships we will have in this.  

Finally, I come to the most common use (and misuse) of the word love.  Love in the romantic sense.  Here is where things get tricky.  In my vocabulary, it is possible, even romantically, to love someone without a mutuality to the emotion, but, I reserve (or at least, try to) the phrase "in love with" for when the feeling becomes mutual.  Romantic love, in the individual sense, doesn't seem much different that the love we have for chosen family/friends, other than involving a sexual/sensual attraction to the other person.  When romantic love becomes special is when two people truly fall in love.  In modern vernacular, "falling in love with" has become a way of saying "beginning to love" someone.  I myself have been guilty of this, but have decided that I will make a conscious effort not to use it in that way, because, to me, the phrase "in love with" implies a mutuality, a sense of embarking on the journey of love side-by-side with someone.

This brings me to a question of whether one can be in love with a non-sexual friend.  My gut response is a resounding maybe.  For my own vernacular purposes, I would say that if there is someone, whether or not you are sexually involved with them, whom you place as equally important as yourself in your decisions, and who you would intentionally plan to spend a good chunk of your life living with, that you could say you were in love with them.  Many people wouldn't understand this usage of the phrase, but i think it's totally valid.

Love is a word which has been misused so much in the past that many in the world have no real concept of what it means, or what it should mean.  I recognize that it can and should have different meanings to each and every person, and humbly offer my current definition.  As I said before: love is a feeling when you care for someone to the point that you put their needs on par with your own.  Love compels us to do many things, some better than others.  Love and society often compel us to put the needs/wants/feelings of our significant other (SO) ahead of those of our own.  While this does appear a noble course of action, and is a significant consideration in the art of compromise, which is endlessly important to relationships, I don't consider it a smart or safe way to go through a whole relationship.  If we don't take care of ourselves, we won't be healthy/safe/sane to care for our SO when they truly need it.  I think the best way to approach decisions around the needs/wants/feelings of each person thus: Assess it on a scale of urgency and necessity.  While it might seem slightly harsh and final, and is definitely flexible, I think a good rule of thumb is to prioritize the needs of either over the wants of the other.  Feelings add a dimension to that, because they merely are, and can't be quantified.  I would deal with this by trying to see if there is a need or a want associated with the alleviation of any feelings that you want to change.  When it's a matter of conflicting needs, creative compromise is called for, with no solid rule of thumb.  Conflicting wants are similar, but I would recommend and hope to practice conceding to the wants of a partner more often than fighting for your own, as a strategy to encourage good will in the relationship.  I would not, however, recommend always conceding, as this could create feelings of inequity and resentment.

This doesn't specifically answer any of my questions, but to me it's an important tangent.  There is also a flip side to taking care of the other person above yourself.  The phrase "I'm doing this because I love you" to justify different varieties of harsh treatment, especially in relationships where a power difference exists, has been much maligned, and although I disagree with many of the actions, I don't (anymore) believe that the phrase itself is wrong in many cases.  While I disagree with the actions, often I believe that the parent, or other authority figure truly does care for their charge and is acting out of what they believe to be everyone's best interests.  That being said, that same phrase can be and has been used to justify total abuses of power that are completely self-centered and have nothing to do with the other person's interests.

As for my last question, I shall expand it a bit, and outline my version of the levels of being romantically attracted to someone.  First, there's liking someone.  This is a large category, and, (in light of my realization about the difference between loving and being in love with someone) can be the only step before loving them.  As I said before, love begins when you place their needs on par with yours, so anything before that could be called like .  But there is another option.  Sometimes just used as a synonym for liking, I use the word infatuation to mean something a little different.  In my vocabulary, infatuation is when you "obsessively like" someone.  When you don't necessarily put their needs on the same level with yours, but you do have the feeling of liking them to the point of thinking about them everyday, most of the time.  Beyond either of those, we have love and in love with, which I have already discussed.

Well, this turned out interesting: A blog that I came to, meaning to write about my latest big crush which has been somewhere in the range of liking, infatuation and love, turned into a long, potentially dry rant about the semantics of love.  Part of my purpose with this blog is to allow myself to word vomit with very little filter or editing, and let people take from it what they will, and as such, I'm putting this out there, and hopefully you'll get something out of it.

For the finale of this performance I give two songs:
 

No comments:

Post a Comment