Love?

I’m not going to deal with this topic in the typical clichéd way( although these days, what isn’t clichéd?) First of all, I might be a bit eager in my approach to something as apparently complex as Love, but forgive, firstly, my German-style capitalisation of the subject noun, and secondly, my attempts at kicking the pigeons around my feet while I write this article at a café in Sea Point.

What is love? National Geographic magazine, some time back, ran a feature on it and described it as a chemical reaction. Wow, what an anti-climax: the thought that all those intense, severe, fierce, powerful feelings of passion, which one would call “Love,” are nothing but a collection of chemicals influencing the synapses in your brain’s nerves. Thanks for that NatGeo, that helps me as much as brick-flavoured cheese spread. That’s when you’re pushing the research boundaries. There’s a line guys, the Geographic crossed it.

Here’s the thing though, love is one of those things that is never simple. It’s always complicated, at least, that’s my experience of it. In light of this, maybe it is an idea to look at it from a scientific perspective. Maybe it’s not so much a case of “I love you, but you make me mad and I don’t know why,” but rather “I feel a lot of dopamine when you make me laugh, but when you’re with your school friends my levels of chemical-X are at their highest.” That approach might make things easier to comprehend. That way, we can avoid the complication of love.

The National Geographic approach also solves the problem regarding different kinds of Love. The way that you love your partner is different to the way you love your family. The way you love your friends is different to the way you love your fellow countrymen. The way you love your goldfish is different to how you feel about that dessert. It probably all has something to do with different levels of chemicals in your brain. And I think there’s something special about that, because it makes this creepy situation between your goldfish and the Crème Brule a little easier to deal with. It also helps me understand why I want to kiss my girlfriend, but not my sister.

I also have to consider, just for this paragraph at least, the situation with arranged marriages. Can a relationship that is forced allow Love to form? I know of people who have been forced into marriage, and have learnt to love each other. Okay, I lie, I don’t know anyone in that situation, but I saw it in a film once. But irregarless (that’s a new word), that situation could happen. Love can grow. And I know this because Love is a varying concoction of chemicals; so in the same way, a song that gets played every night at every club can eventually grow on you, so too can you get used to someone and start to develop feelings for them. This is because it’s all due to chemicals. Maybe it’s all down to the right mix, like when you’re trying to fuse new flavours or combine different singers: sometimes it works wonderfully and the meal is delicious, and other times you realise that Timberland, Justin and Madonna just wasted four minutes of your life, and they didn’t save the world in said amount of time.

I have to use examples in my attempt to get some sort of cohesion of what the deal is here, because we all have a different understanding of Love, and each of us loves in a different way. I doubt that you love dead people in the same way that I do… Jokes, I’m not a necrophiliac, but that’s my point. You can love some things, and really not love others, no matter how much it’s forced, or how much your parents are pushing you into a relationship (with a dead person? Wtf? But at least you won’t argue about which film you want to watch).

But what is it about love that leads to marriage? I guess marriage, and the decision to spend the rest of life with someone is not that simple either. I know you’re picturing the typical instance: two people happily married walking down the beach and living out their lives together, eventually old and creased and dead in the same coffin. Here’s a spanner to throw in the works: what about polygamy? Zuma said he loves all his wives. So did King Mswati of Swaziland. King Mswati loves wives so much that he gets a new one every year. No, really. He picks out a new wife at the annual reed dance, in which all the Swazi women take their tops off and go for a nice march to the king. Can you really love more than one person? I would say “yes.” Imagine all the people you’ve had a proper relationship with. Now imagine meeting them all at once, and that you still love them all as you have done. Imagine spending your life with each of them. I can see each one bringing something unique to the relationship, and if you’ve been able to have feelings for all them, what’s to stop you from having all those feelings at once? It’s all chemicals remember, so you’ll just have to have the right balance to allow feelings for however many people.

So technically, love is a chemical reaction. Forgive the cliché, but in life, Love is so much more than that. Love is when you know that you have a special place for someone. Love is when your stomach drops when you think of that certain someone. Love is what makes you go crazy insane when you fight with your girlfriend or boyfriend but still want to kiss them afterwards. Love is what makes you want to spend your lifetime with someone (by lifetime, I mean five years, what with this divorce rate of ours). Love is different to each person. “All you need is Love/Love makes the world go round” vibe. You know what I mean! It’s just mos Love. Now go write a song about it, indie kid.