In the Spirit of… Love

Caitlin Heenan

More stories from Caitlin Heenan

Even though this word has a place in every language around the world, none can do it justice. The language of love is a language humans have yet been able to master. There is no grammar, sentence structure, tenses of verbs; It is the language of emotions and human behavior.

It is this unspoken, unwritten language that love belongs to and flourishes in. When humans attempt to translate this language, the message is greatly misconstrued.

Only one definition of love has ever crossed my path that has come relatively close to what the word should be used for and ironically enough, it comes from the comedy TV series, “How I Met Your Mother.”

Ted Mosby described the emotion, expected from human life as such: “‘If you’re looking for the word that means caring about someone beyond all rationality and wanting them to have everything they want no matter how much it destroys you, it is love. And when you love someone, you – you don’t stop, ever. Even when people roll their eyes or call you crazy, even then, especially then. You just, you don’t give up, because if I could give up, if I could just take the whole world’s advice and move on and find someone else, that wouldn’t be love, that would be, that would be some other disposable thing that is not worth fighting for.’”

The disposable things, unworthy of struggle and pain are all of the other objects and relationships we as humans attempt to describe with the word love.

Love should only be used to describe the relationship with the few people held in the inner circle of one’s life, those a person would give anything, even life, to be with. As a society, we overuse the word love. We destroy the meaning by believing it applies to those things that are not worth fighting for. Even those of us with the best of intentions dramatically overuse it.

This word is used to describe an emotional connection to objects and even relationships unworthy of the word. Not a day goes by that the word love is used to describe the supposed emotional relationship people have with objects such as food, clothing, electronics or relationships with people that will leave the lives of those claiming such a strong connection.

Love is a word disrespected in meaning by our society. People should take a step back and really think about what is important to them, what they really love. I can bet it is not the menial objects and places that many claim to love, such as Chipotle and an iPhone.