(Part 1: The Shapeshifter of Language)
There’s a cruel little magic trick in the English language, and it’s the word love. Four letters. One syllable. Uttered by toddlers and deathbed philosophers alike. It’s printed on mugs, whispered in bed, and scrawled on war memorials. It can mean “I like your vibe,” or “I would take a bullet for you,” or “I guess I’ll keep feeding you until one of us dies, Fluffy.”
What makes love such an absurdly rich subject is its complete refusal to stay in one box. It’s the shapeshifter of emotional language, the linguistic equivalent of a quantum particle: it means different things depending on who’s observing it and how. You can love your mom, love tacos, love your country, love your job (allegedly), love the divine, or love that one indie album from 2007 that “changed your life.”
And somehow, we use the same brittle word for all of them.
So what is it, really? Is it a feeling? An action? A neurological state? A moral imperative? A delusion? Or is it a marketing scheme with good lighting?
1. Etymology and Linguistic Chaos
Let’s start at the roots. “Love” comes from Old English lufu, which itself comes from Proto-Germanic lubo, meaning, shocker, affection or desire. Go back further, and you hit the Proto-Indo-European root leubh, meaning “to care, to desire.” So from the beginning, this word had range. It never belonged to just one type of bond.
But other languages didn’t make the same mistake. Greek, that ancient show-off, had at least four separate words for different kinds of love:
• Eros for romantic or passionate love (also: drama)
• Philia for friendship (pure, platonic, probably involves board games)
• Storge for familial love (the kind where you hate them, but you’d still hide the body)
• Agape for unconditional, divine, or selfless love (rare and possibly mythical)
English? Nah. We just said “love” and left the rest to context. Good job, English. You’ve caused centuries of confusion and at least 85% of every awkward conversation in a relationship.
2. Psychological: Chemical Romance
Modern psychology, never one to leave a concept unsullied by neurotransmitters, breaks love into attachment systems, dopamine loops, oxytocin floods, and trauma-bonding dynamics. If love feels magical, it’s probably because your brain is flooded with the same substances that make people addicted to gambling and sugar cereal.
• Romantic love? Thank dopamine and norepinephrine.
• Long-term attachment? That’s your old pal oxytocin and vasopressin, turning pair-bonding into a biochemical lease agreement.
• Obsessive love? You guessed it, low serotonin, high drama.
Basically, love is your brain rewarding you for not dying alone. It’s the evolutionary carrot dangled in front of your genetic horse.
So… is love real? Or is it just a squishy euphemism for “temporarily mutual delusion supported by a chemical cocktail”?
Yes.
3. Philosophical: Love as Moral Practice
Cue the philosophers, stepping into the mess like they always do. Plato thought love (particularly eros) was a way of longing for the divine. Not sex, but transcendence. Which is a convenient excuse when you get rejected: “I wasn’t hitting on you, I was just yearning for truth through your eyes.”
Kierkegaard wrote about love as a duty, not a feeling, but a choice to will the good of another. A little heavier than your average Valentine’s card. Simone Weil saw love as attention, the purest form of it. And bell hooks? She said love is an action, not just a feeling: a combination of care, commitment, trust, knowledge, responsibility, and respect.
What these all have in common is the idea that love isn’t just about what you feel, but how you show up. Not the flutter, but the follow-through.
So maybe love is a verb. But if it is, it’s the kind of verb that comes with chores, taxes, and some deeply confusing emotional side quests.
Let’s stop there for now, before we accidentally summon an ex.
To Be Continued in Part 2:
• The cultural industrial complex of love (hello, capitalism!)
• Love in religion and myth (spoiler: gods are terrible at it)
• Love as a revolutionary act (and/or trap)
• Can you love without liking? Can you love too much? Is it still love if it ends?Love: The Word That Means Everything and Nothing
(Part 2: The Cult, The Currency, The Catastrophe)
Welcome back to our increasingly unnecessary but weirdly satisfying philosophical séance about love. If Part 1 was about what love is (spoiler: no one knows), Part 2 is about what we do with it. How we package it, sell it, weaponize it, and ruin it just enough to write a song about it. Ready? Probably not, but let’s pretend you are.
4. Love, Incorporated: Capitalism’s Favorite Emotion
If you thought love was something pure and untouchable, congratulations, you’ve never walked into a CVS in early February.
Love, in the hands of capitalism, is not an emotion. It’s a seasonal promotional campaign. It’s heart-shaped, over-scented, underwhelming, and usually $49.99. Weddings, diamond rings, engagement parties, Hallmark movies, Instagram proposal packages, it’s all one big love-industrial complex designed to make you feel like your relationship is broken unless it comes with a credit card swipe and floral arrangements curated by an algorithm.
Romantic love in particular has been hijacked by consumer culture. The “soulmate” narrative? Brought to you by 19th-century literature and 20th-century jewelry companies. The idea that love should be effortless, passionate, and eternal? Brought to you by people who definitely got divorced later. The market sells love like a lifestyle brand, and you, my sweet summer dumpling, are the target demographic.
5. Love in Myth and Religion: Divine Drama Queens
Gods, saints, and mythical creatures have always had… complicated relationships with love. Which makes sense, since they didn’t have therapy.
• Greek mythology? A nightmare. Zeus “loved” by transforming into swans and bulls. Narcissus loved himself so hard he died.
• Christianity gave us agape, unconditional divine love, which sounds nice until you realize it often comes with tests, suffering, and spiritual guilt trips.
• Hinduism? A tapestry of romantic devotion and cosmic destruction. Love is both transcendent and a little chaotic, just like your last situationship.
• Buddhism? Kind of side-eyes attachment altogether. Want less suffering? Love less clingily. Harsh, but not wrong.
Basically, if the gods are any indication, love is powerful, divine, and absolutely unmanageable. It creates worlds, destroys cities, and causes at least one major character to turn into a tree.
6. Love as Rebellion, or the Tender Middle Finger
In a world full of apathy, cruelty, and overpriced dating apps, to love, genuinely, actively, vulnerably, is a tiny act of rebellion.
To love without possession.
To love with boundaries.
To love people who are not “useful” to you.
To love yourself in a world that profits when you don’t.
That’s radical.
Audre Lorde said it best: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Love as a weapon? Yes. But not the Hallmark kind. The kind that says, “I will see your pain and stay.” The kind that builds communities, families, resistance movements. The kind that helps people survive, even if their stories are never turned into Netflix originals.
7. Love’s Dark Twin: Obsession, Codependence, and Other Fun Things
Of course, we have to acknowledge the other side of love. The bad haircut version. The clingy, manipulative, unwashed hoodie of love.
You can say “I love you” and mean “I want to control you.”
You can call it love, and actually mean fear.
You can be addicted to love like a substance, seeking out drama, chaos, or even pain just to feel something.
So where’s the line? Somewhere between wanting someone and needing them. Between choosing someone and collapsing without them. Love becomes dangerous when it stops being an act of giving and starts being a symptom of hunger.
8. Can Love Exist Without Liking? Can You Love Too Much?
Yes, you can love people you don’t like. That’s called family holidays.
You can also love someone “too much, “if” too much” means loving in a way that erases yourself. Love that costs you your identity, your autonomy, or your peace is not noble. It’s a hostage situation with better lighting.
There’s a fine line between devotion and self-destruction, and love likes to dance on it wearing stilettos.
Love as an Ongoing Question
So where does that leave us? What do we actually know?
• Love is a word, a verb, a lie, a miracle.
• It’s as real as your brain chemicals and as imaginary as your soulmate.
• It can heal you, ruin you, grow you, and make you listen to acoustic guitar playlists you swore you hated.
• It’s worth everything, and it means nothing until you show up for it.
And still, after all that, we don’t get a clear definition.
Which is probably the point.
Love defies being pinned down. It’s a moving target, a cosmic joke, a deep longing wrapped in a fleeting moment. It demands to be lived, not defined. A question you answer again and again, every time you stay, or leave, or forgive, or try.
So, yeah. That’s love.
You’re welcome, or I’m sorry. Possibly both.