Log with Liv

I read something recently that has since occupied a large portion of my mind. It was a question essentially asking if people would still fall in love and marry each other and pursue traditional “romantic” relationships if we had not been taught from an early age about love. If the word love was not in our vocabulary, if we did not grow up watching rom-coms, if dating culture did not exist, and the idea of falling in love was foreign, would humans still find and commit to partners because of some feeling of desire deep within ourselves?

Would we fall in love if we were not taught love? Or is it some irresistible human urge, some metaphysical itch, located far within us that draws us together whether or not we have the capacity to define it, whether or not there is precedent?

It seems an awfully unpoetic idea that love is a learned behavior. Although, there is something beautiful to be said about adopting such a vulnerable desire because of observing those close to you do so as well. I have the same work ethic as my mom and the same music taste as my dad, so who is to say their potential and capacity for love has not been taught to me in the same way since well before I could comprehend I was already the student of life’s most ambiguous lesson.

Whether an impulse or an imitation, love occurs every moment of every day as people find love and beauty in even the most ordinary happenings. I fall in love dozens of times a day, and not once does it look like a love-at-first-sight scene from a Hallmark movie.

A short list of the times I have loved this past week:

• Standing in the checkout line at Joann Fabrics holding a rainbow feather boa, chatting with a girl buying a red boa. Waving my hands with excitement as we discovered we were going to the same concert that night. Talking about our favorite songs, our outfits, our seats. 
• Walking an old woman to her table at my job as a hostess. She was unsteady on her feet, so when I offered her my arm, she leaned into me with thanks. She told me she was going to die soon. I told her to enjoy her meal. 
• Sitting on my couch early in the morning with the sun warming my body and in my eyes. Falling in and out of sleep as the sun rose, shadows leaping across my face.
• Watching my friend laugh with another as they spoke quickly and excitedly in a language I do not understand. 
• Dancing with my best friend under strobe lights as one of our favorite musicians performed in front of us. I fell in love with her for the thousandth time and fell in love for the first with the girls standing around us. I don’t know their names, but for that night, we were in love. With each other, with the music. We were familiar.
• Driving around with my dog in the pouring rain with no particular destination in mind. Sitting in the driver’s seat, singing along to the music blaring from the speakers, with my dog in the passenger’s seat, tongue out and tail wagging.
• Making my grandmother and me tea (she chose green tea, I chose blueberry). Sitting close under a heated blanket talking about my cousins, her friends, the recent drama from the small town she lives in. 

I am in love with my best friends, my heart uniquely theirs. I fall deeper in love each time we laugh, each time we share a judgmental, knowing glance, each time we brush shoulders in the hallway, grinning hello. All this being said, I certainly did not grow up being told fairytales of friends who loved each other or strangers who shared moments of love, fleeting and real. 

I grew up, instead, going to concerts with my father and his childhood best friend. Nobody told me it was love, and I doubt my dad would ever say they were in love, but weren’t they? Aren’t they? Isn’t texting each other when you are happy because you want the other to share in your joy love? Isn’t laughing over childhood memories and asking each other how their aging parents are doing love?

I end every facetime with my best friend by telling her I love her. She tells me, smiling, that she loves me too. I know this. She knows this. And yet we repeat it each call, two heart-eyed parrots, I suppose. Love is redundant. Consistent. 

I don’t know if people would love each other the same way if we had not been exposed to a nuclear type of affection or idyllic Hollywood courtships for our entire lives. Love would exist, sure, and I would argue it would be more honest. Simpler; innocent joy and desire. Expectation and precedence seem like merely complicating factors. Whether or not we have a certain phrase to define it or a few letters that supposedly sum up the breadth of our passions and appreciation, there remains an urge within each of us that I wholeheartedly believe is love, or at least the seed for which love to grow from. A hollow space cleared away between our organs and skin begging to be filled. A place and potential that could never be taught, whether intentionally or by virtue of existing in the 21st century.

What is it they say at weddings? Love is patient, kind. Love is a girl stopping you on the street to tell you how much she likes your shoes. It is catching a classmate’s eye in class and not looking away. Love is ordinary and mundane and comfortable. It is human connection and appreciation, and the optimist in me chooses to believe we are each born with this tendency, with the capacity for such a bond.