What is love? Seriously, though, what is it? What is love? A verb? A noun? A universal truth? An ideal? A common thread of all religions? A cult? A neurological phenomenon? There's no shortage of answers. Some are all-encompassing. It conquers all. It's all you need. It's all there is. These are all comparisons, though, ways of defining it by contrast, by saying it's more important than all other things, but is it? Sure, love matters more than your standard turkey sandwich, but does it matter more than shelter? Or sanity? Or an exceptional turkey sandwich? No matter your answer, you're just ranking it, not defining it. Another challenge to defining love is we often try to do so while falling into it or out of it. Would you trust someone who just won the lottery to accurately define the concept of currency? Or, I don't know, ask a guy to define bears while he's fending them off? Or is romance not like winning the lottery? Are break ups not like bear attacks? Bad comparisons? That's my point. I'm not thinking right because I'm in love, so ha! Taking a step back, or taking a cold shower, whatever, love is potentially the most intensely thought about thing in all of human history. And despite centuries upon centuries of obsession, it still overwhelms us. Some say it's a feeling, a magical emotion, a feeling for someone like you've never felt before. But feelings are fluid, not very concrete foundation for a definition. Sometimes you hate the person you love. Plus, come on, you've felt feelings like it before, sort of in miniature. Your relationships with your family shape your relationships with partners. And your love for your partner may be in its own dynamic relationship, healthy or totally weird, with the love of your parents and siblings. Love is also a set of behaviors we associate with the feeling: Holding hands, kissing, hugging, public displays of affection, dating, marriage, having kids, or just sex. But these loving actions can be subjective or culturally relative. You may love or be someone who can't have kids or doesn't want to, who believes in marriage but also in divorce, who's from a culture where people don't really date the way we think of dating, or who just doesn't want to make out on the bus. But if love is a thing that we can define, then how can it mean opposite things for so many people? So, maybe love's just all in your head, a personal mystery winding through your neural pathways and lighting up pleasing, natural rewards in your nervous system. Perhaps these rewards are addictive. Perhaps love is a temporary or permanent addiction to a person, just like a person can be addicted to a drug. I don't mean to be edgy like some pop song. Evidence shows that chemicals in your brain stimulated by another person can make you develop a habit for that person. The person comes to satisfy a physiological craving, and you want more. But then sometimes, slowly or suddenly, you don't. You've fallen out of love, become unaddicted, for a spell. What happened? Does one develop a tolerance or hit a limit? Why do some lovers stay addicted to each other their entire lives? Perhaps to create new lives, to proliferate their species? Maybe love is just human DNA's optimal method for bringing about its own replication. There are evolutionary arguments regarding every human mating behavior, from how we display ourselves to potential mates, to how we treat each other in relationships, to how we raise kids. Thus, some argue that the feeling you think you feel in your soul is just biology's way to make you continue our species. Nature has selected you to have crushes on hotties, just like it makes monkeys have crushes on hot monkeys, and biology marches on. But is that all love is? Or, perhaps worse, is it just a construct, some fake concept we all convince each other to try to live up to for a fake sense of purpose? Maybe it is a construct, but let's be more precise about what a construct is because love is constructed from reality: Our experiences, feelings, brain chemistry, cultural expectations, our lives. And this edifice can be viewed through countless dimensions: scientific, emotional, historical, spiritual, legal, or just personal. If no two people are the same, no two people's love is the same either. So, in every loving relationship, there's a lot to talk about and partners should be open to that, or the relationship probably won't last. Love is always up for discussion and, sure, under construction. So, if we can't define it, that's a good sign. It means we're all still making it. Wait, I didn't mean, you know what I meant.
什麼是愛? 但說真的,它到底是什麼? 什麼是愛? 一個動詞? 一個名詞? 一個普世的真理? 一個完美典範? 一種所有宗教的共通點? 一種狂熱? 一種神經學現象? 這答案可不少 還包羅萬象 它征服了所有 這是你所需要的一切 這就是一切 但這一切都是用比較的方式來定義愛 但這一切都是用比較的方式來定義愛 說愛比其他事情都來得重要 說愛比其他事情都來得重要 但真的嗎? 當然,愛情是比 你的普通火雞三明治重要 但它是不是比避風港重要? 比精神正常重要? 比特製火雞三明治重要? 不論你的答案是什麼 你只是在排名而已 並不是定義它 另一個定義愛的挑戰是 我們太常試著這麼做 當墜入愛河或失戀時 當墜入愛河或失戀時 你相信某個剛中了樂透的人 會精準地定義貨幣的概念嗎? 還是問某個正在抵禦熊群的人 請他來定義熊? 還是戀愛和中樂透不一樣? 失戀和遭熊攻擊沒兩樣? 很糟的比喻嗎? 那就是我的重點 我無法正確思考 因為我正在戀愛中 所以, 哈! 往後退一步 或洗個冷水澡 諸如此類 在所有人類的歷史中 愛很可能是對事物最強烈的想法 而且儘管經過許多世紀的癡迷 它仍然征服了我們 有些人說那是一種感覺 一種魔幻的情感 一種對某人前所未有的感覺 但感覺是易變的 它並沒有實質的基礎來定義 有時你討厭你所愛的人 再加上... 拜託,你們一定也有過那種感覺 只是比較小一點 你和家人的關係 型塑了你和你伴侶的關係 以及你和你伴侶間的愛 也許是在這動態關係中 健康的或是非常怪異的 有著和你父母手足的愛 愛也是一套行為 和我們的感覺有關聯的 握手 親吻 擁抱 公開示愛 約會 結婚 生小孩 或只是性愛 但這些愛的動作可以是主觀的 或跟文化有關的 你可能會愛上某人,或你本身是無法生小孩 或不想生小孩的人、 某個相信婚姻也相信離婚的人、 他的地方文化並不太真正約會的人 如我們所想的那種約會、 或就是不願在公車上親熱的人 但如果愛是一件可讓我們定義的事 那麼對於許多人來說 怎麼可能是指相反的事? 所以,也許愛只是在我們腦中 一種縈繞在神經通路的個人之謎 並燃起愉悅感、自然酬賞 在你的神經系統內 或許這些酬賞是會成癮的 或許愛只是 對某人一時或永久的沉迷 就像一個毒品成癮的人 我並不是像一些流行歌曲一樣尖銳 我並不是要像一些流行歌曲一樣尖銳 證據顯示在你腦內的化學物質 受到某人的刺激 會讓你發展出對那人的喜好 那個人便成為 滿足生理上的渴望 而且你會想要更多 但有時候 緩慢的或太突然的 你並不會這樣 你曾經失戀過 一陣子變得不癡迷 一陣子變得不癡迷 發生了什麼事? 是培養了容忍力還是達到了極限? 為何有些愛人們終其一生 對彼此癡迷? 或許為了創造新的生命來延續物種? 或許為了創造新的生命來延續物種? 也許愛只是人類 DNA 為了實現複製自己的最佳方法 關於人類的配對行為 有許多演化的論點 從我們如何向潛在伴侶展現我們自己、 在關係中如何對待彼此、 到如何養育小孩 因此,有些人說 那種你認為在你靈魂深處的感覺 只是個生物學的途徑,為的是讓你延續種族 自然已經挑選了你 來愛上那個辣妹 就像讓猴子 愛上迷人的猴子 而生物得以延續下去 但這是愛的全部了嗎? 或者,更糟的是那會不會只是一種構想 一種我們為了一個目的的虛假意義 一種我們為了一個目的的虛假意義 而說服彼此去實踐的一個假的概念 它可能是一個構想 但是讓我們對何為構想更精準些 但是讓我們對何為構想更精準些 因為愛從現實裡建構 我們的經驗、 感覺、 腦內的化學物質、 文化的期待、 我們的生活 而這偉大的建築物 可以透過數不清的面向來看 科學的、 情感的、 歷史的、 精神的、 合法的 或純粹是個人的 如果沒有兩個人是一樣的 那麼兩個人的愛也不會是一樣的 因此在每一段愛情中 有很多需要談的 而伴侶也該對彼此坦承 否則這段關係可能不會長久 愛總是被拿出來討論 且當然是需要建設的 所以,如果我們無法對愛下定義 那是一個很好的跡象 代表我們仍然在做它 等等, 我並不是那個意思 你知道我的意思