Tag: Love

My first wedding ceremony

On By Swarn GillIn Humor, Philosophy, Prose and Poetry, Science4 Comments

So I was fortunate enough to be asked by two former students and friends to perform their ceremony.  As both atheists themselves they wanted someone who would give a more humanist ceremony.  They are both steeped in science and both educators so I wanted to create something that was both expressed my heart and incorporated why I knew about them.  I am thankful it was well received.  I will leave out their last names so that there is at least some anonymity that is preserved. 🙂

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Today we are gathered to celebrate the love between Matthew —– and Christina —–.  For their union to last love must be shown to be more than just an abstract idea.  They are in love,  but how do we know love exists?  If we present the hypothesis that love is real, how do we go about proving such a thing?  The answer is research. As with any good research, we must first conduct a literature review and see what previous studies about love have found.

Literature Review

Many words about love have been written.  We can find metaphors such as Voltaire’s words “Love is a canvass furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.”  But words like these often leave us with more questions than answers.  Love inspires imaginative gestures such as Alfred Tennyson’s words “If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.”  However, such words are often intangible, since they paint pictures of unrealistic situations that do not touch our actual lives.

We also find in literature many who question whether love can be effectively described at all.  The genius physicist and co-inventor of the first laser Ali Javan said “Love can sometimes be magic.  But magic sometimes can just be an illusion.”  The 17th century French Writer Francois de la Rochefoucauld supported this idea when he said “True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about, but few have seen.”  From this we may at least glean that true love is rare and that we can call into question whether written words of love come from a source that has truly experienced what they claim knowledge about.

When it comes to words, many doubt that they are even useful in matters of love. Shakespeare recognized that “One may as soon go kindle fire with snow, as to seek to quench the fire of love with words”. Additionally, 16th century French writer Francois Rabelais said “Gestures, in love, are incomparably more attractive, effective and valuable than words.”  Finally, American writer Zelda Fitzgerald points to the difficulty of our quest when she says “Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold”.

Love becomes easier to understand when we define it in terms of our actions.  Van Gogh said “The way to know life is to love many things.”  This is echoed by Mother Theresa who said “Love begins at home and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in that action.”  We can connect further to this idea of love when we consider how love exists even in those actions that seem routine.  Marilyn Monroe said “The real lover is the man who can thrill you by kissing your forehead, or smiling into your eyes, or staring into space”.

But even as we feel inspired and positive about love, listening to what great minds of the past had to say, what tangible evidence do we have for its existence?  Experimentation is the next step and thus we must decide on what methodology will help us demonstrate how real love is.  For love is not just a concept in our mind, or a feeling in our heart.  Love has no value if only kept, it must be shared.  And if it is shared than we can observe it.

Methodology

In matters of love our best way of observing is through our 5 senses.  How do we see love?  How does it taste?  Does love have a smell?  What does love sound like? And finally how can we truly feel love?  These questions we must try to answer in the next section.

Data and Analysis

Visual evidence of love can be seen in many places.  It could be the sight of an object that you built for your loved one to compliment the home, or in a gift prominently displayed demonstrating its importance and appreciation.  It may simply be the sight of the table set and dinner ready after coming home from a long day.  It is the sight of the other person looking especially beautiful or handsome as they put in extra time to make themselves look nice for a night out.

As we turn to taste, we can find evidence when eating at a familiar restaurant where the menu holds some of your favorite foods, and with each bite you are reminded of past memories with each other.  It can be in the taste of a good wine on a romantic evening.  Or, more simply, it can be found in the taste of each other’s lips in a passionate kiss; a flavor that is unique and unlike any other.

Often overlooked is the sense of smell, but it is the one most closely linked to memory.  Love may be found in the smell of breakfast cooking in the morning as you wake up; the aroma of coffee drifting into the bedroom.  It can be in the fragrance of a shampoo in the hair, perfume on the wrist or cologne on a piece of clothing.  But even these things are not required, for just like the unique taste we have, we also have a unique smell that permeates those things that we interact with most closely.  Often it is the quickest way to bring to the fore the memories of the one you love when they’re away…causing you to miss and love them all the more.

Love delights in sounds, for when you are together, sound is what fills the air.  It is in the sound of the voice when sharing feelings and thoughts you would only ever express to each other; knowing that while it makes you vulnerable their love for you is greater.  It is in the familiar sound of sarcasm as you mock republicans together, and it is in the sound of laughter as you both experience good times and joy.  It is the sound of new music that is played for you because the other person knows your tastes so well they instinctively know what you will enjoy.  And sometimes it is in the sound of words “I love you”.  And though we have shown that words are not all, there is never harm in such an expression.

Touch is last because touch is the unique sense that can be experienced by both simultaneously.   And though making love might be an obvious one here, over the course of a lifetime it tends to be the part of touch that gets missed the least.  What we feel when we embrace or hold hands often means so much more. Or that half asleep warm feeling we get when our partner, coming home late after an exhausting day, or maybe a night of carousing, wraps their arms around us as they slip into bed.  It may be in the feel of a comforting caress on the cheek when we are sick, sad, or hurting.

We must remember that grand gestures of love such as this wedding are but a day in the life you have pledged to share through marriage.  Love is experiential, and iterative, and here we have recounted some of the many ways that we can find love in our day to day lives.  Though these days seem ordinary, with careful observation, we can see how filled with love they actually are.  And over a lifetime these simple things grow into something even stronger. This is emphasized by American author Lawrence Durrell, who said: “The richest love is that which submits to the arbitration of time”.

Conclusion

The evidence you can collect about love in your life is plentiful and thus we can safely conclude that love is real.  And no conclusion would be complete without a look to the future.  As you grow older, so your love grows as well.  Let that love move you to actions not only for each other, but spread that love outward always.  Nineteenth century women’s rights activist Lydia Child said “The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and the crimes of humanity, all lie in the one word ‘love’. It is the divine vitality that everywhere produces and restores life.”

Our research is complete, and now as you say the vows you have written for each other, reflect on how those words translate into experience.

Vows

Exchange Rings

Matt and Christina, I’m honored to pronounce you husband and wife.

Christina, you may now kiss the groom.

Finally, no research would complete without peer review.  Those that have come today, do so out of that love which we have worked to define.  Therefore I ask everybody here today to applaud in approval of that love which our research has shown to exist for the happy couple.

Ladies and gentleman I am pleased to present to you for the first time as a married couple Mr. Matthew —- and Mrs. Christina —-!!!!!!!!!!!

 

What is Love? (written Nov. 12th, 2012)

On By Swarn GillIn PhilosophyLeave a comment

Humanity has been trying to define this since the first musicians and poets, perhaps even earlier.  So I figured I might as well take my shot at it.

My central thesis is that love is too narrowly defined by society and as a result we don’t experience as much love as we are capable.  I am of the opinion that no feeling of love should be discounted and that love when it happens is always a good thing.  I am normally one that approaches everything from academic standpoint, but I am going to try and keep most that out here, because my opinions are a product of both what I have read, but also from experience.  And ultimately, regardless of what we might learn academically about love, much of the views we form about love does seem to be experiential.

So perhaps to start, we should look at what we love.  I feel that love deepens in accordance with the complexity and changeability of what we love.  Which is why loving another human being is the most satisfying, but also the most difficult and sometimes rather perilous.    I feel that this is one of the reasons why people find it easier to show love towards pets, because they are relatively simplistic in comparison to humans, and are less likely to change in personality.  Provided you show love and care they will give back that love in care.  In many ways I feel this is the attraction of God as well.  However a religion defines God, God while perhaps quite complex is also unchanging and I think many people find this appealing.

In the realm of other humans, we feel love towards family, we feel love towards friends and lovers.  As a quick academic aside there is an evolutionary reason for feeling love towards family (genetic interest), love towards friends (reciprocal  altruism) and love towards those we have sexual relationships with (both genetic interest combined with reciprocal altruism for the purposes of helping offspring survive).    But putting this aside, I believe that we categorize love we feel towards different people, but I would see the feeling of love is often indistinguishable only the way that express that love is different.  This is for obvious reasons and that is important, but in general I feel that when we over categorize love and in essence try to define it under narrow criteria we lose some of its value and joy.  For instance we accept the fact that if we have a second child that we can love that new child as much as the first.  You can love your mother just as much as your father or one cousin just as much as another.  And this would be true for friends also.  Now obviously all these people are slightly different and so how you express and show that love towards them or the reasons why you love them will be different.

What we don’t accept is that when you fall in love with someone, that you can’t fall in love with someone else and still feel the same love you felt for another person.  There is some logic to this of course.  Part of this has to do with the act of “falling in love”.  Falling in love is quite the emotional roller coaster.  The physiological changes are immense, and anybody who has had that to happen will know that they are literally not in their right mind for a good period of time. There is a reason for the expression “love is blind”.  The act of falling in love often defies reason, which makes it more wonderful because that sort of loss of control is so intense and so unique that it makes the experience very spiritual.  This is probably a good thing again from an academic standpoint because you want the experience to feel very significant since the care of offspring is a long term commitment. (And yes I know that we don’t have to create offspring, but that is the evolutionary goal of all life of which we are included).   The key is that intense feeling of being “in love” fades, which is not to say that love gets worse, but the way it feels simply changes.  You get your sanity back. J  That feeling is not supposed to last 20 years and probably not even 10 years.  The point I’m trying to make here is that nature has not prescribed how many times we are supposed to fall in love, only that we will fall in love, possibly multiple times.  This feeling cannot be control, you do not choose who you fall in love with, it just happens.  Just because you are already with someone doesn’t mean it can’t happen again.  I feel that we as a society we find it easy to condemn that person and this is wrong.  However, I think also if you are with somebody already and you fall in love with someone else, we too often tie more meaning to that than there really is.  We can turn our lives upset down, and leave the person we are with for what we think of greener pastures, only to find ourselves, after the “falling in love” feeling fades to the same problems we had before.

I truly believe that our ability to feel love is unlimited, but what we are limited by is energy and time.  This is the only limit that can be fairly placed on love.  In life we must make choices.  Perhaps not about who we love more, but who we expend more of our time and resources on in expressing that love.  The amount of love you can show one child if you only have one, as opposed to 3 children is clearly more, even if you feel the same love for all your children.  We often regret most not being able to express love in proportion to our feelings.  And this can be a sad truth in life.

Love is beautiful.  Love inspires.  Love gives strength.  Love helps you grow and learn.  Love makes us better.  Even if we have limited time and energy, we should try to never be jealous when someone we love feels more love in their heart for more in this world.  Love is a good thing, and often means the most when you love without having a good reason to.  Love also happens rarely, which makes it special when it happens to you, and it should always be cherished.

Perhaps the only thing that all love has in common is that it hurts when one is rejected: whether it is a friend, a parent, a child, a lover.  We might feel that hurt in different ways, but it all has the power to give us sleepless nights, sobbing, stress, and depression.  So maybe Haddaway had it right all along in answering the question.

What is love?

Baby don’t hurt me, no more.

 

But isn’t this also what makes love beautiful?  If love was so certain I truly feel that the joy would not be as a great.   Choose to feel the joy, and life will always feel full.  I am thankful for all those in this world who have touched my heart and soul.  I promise to keep reminding you of how thankful I am for that, and hope I can touch your heart and soul in return.