You Are What You Love

So as to not waste any of your precious time, let's jump right into the rules, since this is something that needs to be discussed ad nauseam. I also need to have time to vigorously pat myself on the back for using the phrase "ad nauseam" in a sentence.

Rule Number 5: You are what you love, and not what loves you back

Alright, so I had to steal this rule from a Jenny Lewis lyric. Haha point and call me a hipster. Regardless, it's a very good representation of the topic of l-o-v-e in our society today. And the reason I know this is because I've been force fed a poor interpretation from traditional times. Yes, it's that Corinthians Bible verse that's read at every wedding. "Love is patient, love is kind, love is a handful of meaningless adjectives strewn together in a way that's designed to make children weep and women swoon." OK, I made that last part up, but there's no arguing that stylistically this verse is a bit bogus. That's not to say that I don't like the verse or its message, I really do believe that a loving relationship should be based on all the things listed in that verse. However, I don't think this actually encapsulates what love really is (despite it's many efforts to define it). Love is not based out of reciprocity and isn't always related to a relationship. In many instances, love is vicious, capricious, forgetful and disappointing. It leads to situations where you can go from talking to someone multiple times a day to never speaking again, usually out of some sense of pride, vengeance or pain. The Bible interpretation may sound pretty in the maid-of-honor's speech, but something so huge as love doesn't really boil down to two people, it actually only involves one.

The better interpretation actually comes in the forgotten verses before it, and the aforementioned Jenny Lewis song. I'll deal with the Bible first. Before the laundry list of adjectives that starts in verse 4, the Corinthians letter says this:

"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."

Sounds a little different, right? In the later definition, love is something that is based around how you interact with other people. This time, love is just something that you can possess regardless of how the other people around you act. This is where Jenny Lewis comes in. The lyric that I posted for Rule #5 is especially important to me right now because I've seen the vicious, capricious, disappointing side of relational love recently - and really, for a long time now, as I've essentially bounced between relationships since high school. In other words, I'm very jaded. I don't know what this love thing is, but I want nothing to do with it because it's burned me one too many times. But Lewis reminds me that I am what I love, and not what loves me back, because often those are two different things. Now this is sort of like the "you are what you eat" saying in that if I eat a pear, I'm not actually a pear, but you get the drift. I can love things like writing, music, sports, whatever, and that's how I'm defined, not by my interactions with other people.

That's not to say that interactive love with other people is not important...in fact it's probably the most important thing in life. But in times where I find myself disappointed because I put so much into a relationship (this applies to friendships too) only to have it fall apart, it's nice to be reminded that the end result of my efforts doesn't reflect on who I am as a person. I am what I love, and while sometimes those things are torturous, malicious, and generally don't love me back, I can still take some comfort in knowing that I am the only person who defines myself and how I love things and people alike.