Witness 06: But, Really, What Is Love Anyway?

Love can't only be for the people you know.

A QUIET JOY
FROM YOU

Thursdays always tend to be so challenging, but this Thursday morning started differently. As I was intently watching the rhythmic stirring of the oat milk that the barista was so focused on, in order to get the appropriate amount of froth for my macchiato (a fussy drink preferred by men apparently), I thought how important it is to do everything with love and intent. She passed me the macchiato, we exchanged smiles both acknowledging the shared joy, and I could feel it tasted different. Made with love.

Millie, London

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A REFLECTION FROM ME

We tend to make a meal out of love. That it can only exist in its most heightened form. That love is only really love if it is the subject of rom-coms, poems, and songs that make you want to clutch your pillow to your chest. We idealise it. Make it feel like it's beyond the realm of possibility. Easier to see love as solely romantic rather than all of the other forms it can live in. 

When we pedestal love and turn it into this undefinable thing that either makes us feel terribly left out if we've not experienced it, or overlook so many things, because we long to experience it; we forget the simplicity of love. The love that just is. Without labels or definition. Without any one specific human attached to it. The love that we are always surrounded by, but don't quite label as love. 

We rarely call it love when a barista turns our coffee into art. We don't rush to tell our friends we experienced love when we watched a toddler jump in puddles in the park. We don't believe it's love when a stranger carries our suitcase up a flight of stairs. Yet, if a partner or even a friend brings us coffee in bed or carries our shopping, we would call it love. When you think about it, there is no difference. 

The everyday kind of love. Not attached to a specific person kind of love. The love that is often the ‘I love the human you are’ love. Or, ‘I love that we share this humanity’ kind of love. Oh, I love that kind of love. It's the willingness to see these daily acts of love in everything we do. Because it really is love. It is empathy for the people who live alongside us, whose names we may never know. It is compassion for the hearts that we see breaking for reasons we may never know. It is the grief and pain for people we will never meet because they have been so brutally oppressed. What is all of that, if not love? 

We are so clearly witnessing the opposite of love right now. In Palestine, Ukraine, Congo and Sudan, in mass shootings, sweeping inequalities and many more. The heartbreaking knowing that this list is horrifically incomplete. It is easy to make a revolution out of hate. Hate galvanises. It prompts action. We've seen hate be the driving force for far too many atrocities. This can't be who we are.

The collective grief we're feeling right now is proof of our innate capacity to love beyond labels. That love exists so far and deep beyond the romantic box its often restricted in. It gets to be the driving force for change when we centre it every single day. Not just in fleeting moments and milestones. Not saved for platitudes in Valentine's cards, Instagram captions or wedding vows, but love that is celebrated in its minutiae.

When it is normalised, it becomes who are. We move in love, breathe it in, let it stay on our skin. We aren't surprised by it, but just in gratitude with it. It's when we have a foundational level of love for humans, animals, and of course, this marvellous planet. We do not pretend that it is a perfect love. We acknowledge it is complex. That we will fight and disagree. This isn't a naive “why can't we all get along” plea. This isn't bypassing the cruel realities of our existence or the fact that tension and pain has its place here. We quite literally have no choice but to return to love. The way we live is not sustainable.

Once we do everything we can do to act, advocate, support, demand better and urgently plea for the people who need us right now, what is left for us to do is to love. 

To love each other. Not only the people we know. Not just our own pets. 
To love each other in the small bits of life. 

Even the bits that feel so silly and insignificant, we must call it what it is…

Love. 

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4 Little Practices For…
QUIET REBELLION

LET…
Yourself be angry this week. Vent in your journal about everything that's pissing you off. Do some written swearing. Scream in a pillow or empty field. It's cathartic. It's human. Release it.

READ…
Ugly: Redefining our Beauty Standards by Anita Bhagwandas and if you're in London head to the Wellcome Collection's exhibition, The Cult of Beauty; unlearning bit by bit. 
 
BREAK…
Your routine and challenge yourself to try something different, walk another route, have a longer conversation with a shopkeeper, give your delivery driver a snack or ask how they're doing. 

CREATE…
A permission affirmation to repeat to yourself when you want to slow down or rest, but find yourself feeling unworthy or guilty. E.g, “I have earned this rest, just because I exist."