Even though this is coming out Sunday, I’m writing it on Friday, Valentine’s Day. In Mexico, today is called the día de amor y amistad, or the day of love and friendship. It’s a nice way of including all kinds of love. While anyone might be partnerless at any given moment, the love we have for each other is always there.
And this type of love in me grows stronger as I get older: for my family, for my friends, for my community, and for the readers who have somehow found me and decided that, among the vast ocean of “content” that exists online, mine is worth reading. While my relationship with the gods is shaky at best, I give thanks every day for all of you, because I truly am thankful.
Unprompted kindness: what a gut-punch of grace. Wow.
That said, I have always been a romantic. I love being in love. There’s not a single time in my life when I can remember not having a crush on someone or feeling actively in love with my partner, like I do now (cue the “awww” tinged with a speck of revulsion).
So in honor of love, I’ve gathered just a handful of illustrations of it that do it more justice than I do. I hope you enjoy them.
The scientific side of love
Here’s evolutionary anthropologist Anna Machin’s take on how we wound up with these feelings in the first place. It’s a great read!
The reason love evolved was to motivate and reward us for taking part in relationships, critical to our survival. That goes for our reproductive partners, children, and extending to our friends. Humans are highly cooperative because we have to be. A species will be solitary unless it absolutely has to cooperate with somebody else. And that’s fine, except it’s incredibly stressful. You have to spend a hell of a lot of time monitoring everybody else’s behavior, making sure you’re spotting those people who are trying to cheat you or steal from you. And the way evolution made sure we cooperate was to come up with chemical bribery. At the basis of love are four neurochemicals. Ultimately, we get addicted to those chemicals. We get this hit of joy, of euphoria, of reward when we interact with the people important to our survival. It’s biological bribery.
Why, yes, those drugs sound awesome. I’ll take a bunch, please.
On our most loving friendships
From Anne Lamott in her book (and my go-to book when I need an existential pick-me-up) Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.
Every so often you realize that without all of them [your closest friends], your life would be barren and pathetic… The marvel is only partly that somehow you lured them into your web 20 years ago, 40 years ago, and they totally stuck with you. The more astonishing thing is that these greatest of all possible people feel the same way about you — horrible, grim, self-obsessed you. They say — or maybe I said — that a good marriage is one in which each spouse secretly thinks he or she got the better deal, and this is true also of our bosom friendships. You could almost flush with appreciation. What a great scam, to have gotten people of such extreme quality and loyalty to think you are stuck with them.
And some music
I love Chris Martin. Well, not like I love the people I know, but you know what I mean. What I love about him, in addition to pretty good music, is his easy smile and laugh, like he is just so excited to be there, doing what he is doing.
But actually, I also like grouchy people, solemn people. It’s the best game to draw a smile or a laugh from them.
Anyway! Chris Martin and Dick Van Dyke is a super sweet song/video, everyone:
Happy Valentine’s Day, my friends. <3
So true!