What is Love?

Romantic love is often entangled with physical desire, where the intoxicating desire for the other is mistaken for something deeper. The powerful drivers that propel the body towards procreation create a heady cocktail of emotions, a pleasurable drug, which can induce a euphoric high, but can also lead to drunken obsession, jealousy, and inevitable disappointment when the initial jolts of passion fade away. Most relationships, at least in their early stages, operate largely at this level, driven by societal expectations of passion and the pursuit of an idealised romantic partner.

Over time, many of these relationships, if they last beyond other attractions, settle into patterns laid out by cultural expectations: marriage, children, and the daily grind required as members of society. Yet, amidst this routine, many couples never truly learn to love one another in the deeper, more meaningful sense. They follow the motions, adhering to prescribed roles, without truly seeing the other.

Romantic love is not about what someone can do for you or the physical pleasure they might provide. Love is the genuine concern for the other person’s well-being. It is the wanting to care for them, not because you expect something in return, but because their happiness, their health, and their emotions genuinely matter to you. In doing so, you are rescued from the ultimately unfulfilling confines of self-interest. When your partner is unwell or unhappy, love makes you want to be there for them, not out of obligation, but because you truly care. It’s a desire to offer support, to be their comfort, and to share in their burdens, transforming you from a shallow creature into a truly alive human being.

Love is about joy. It’s about celebrating life’s moments with the other person, enjoying their successes and happiness. The bond of connection and mutual understanding creates a love that transcends the physical and the temporary. Though, of course, if you love the person, you are more likely to find them attractive and electrified by the energy of their body next to yours. Loving the person makes it more likely you will experience deeper physical pleasures than if you are merely coveting surface appearances.

This leads to a question: who is more likely to experience true love—two twenty-year-olds, captivated by the beauty and sensations of each other’s bodies, or two eighty-year-olds, who see the beauty in each other’s wrinkles, who love each other not for their fading physical appearance but for the familiarity and comfort they have found in one another? The love between these two people is rooted in knowing each other intimately—their strengths, weaknesses, flaws, and virtues—and loving them for all of it.

Love is not about how one looks or how one makes the other feel in the heat of passion. It’s about being present for each other, appreciating the other, and finding comfort in their presence. It’s about love that lasts when the distractions of youth have long faded, leaving behind the enduring connection between two people who have chosen to know each other intimately.

It is the connection, the concern, the joy, and the familiarity that define love, a kind of love that so many seek but only a few truly find. True love, in its deepest sense, is a commitment to the other person’s happiness, a recognition of their beauty that transcends the physical, and an appreciation of the shared journey through life.

Journal 2020-12-29

The art of any performance is truthfully interacting with the situation that is arising.

If all the world is a stage, then not knowing the future - or the fact that you are acting - helps create a great performance.

Completeness

A fear of loneliness leads to desperate actions initiating pain. Enjoying the peace of solitude is breaking free from this chronic condition; and provides the realisation that if you are already complete in yourself then there is more love in you to share.

Perspective

The first stage of learning is being unconsciously incompetent: you don’t know what you’re not good at because you don’t know what you don’t know. Well-being skills can be learnt. One typical motif is that how you look at anything changes your experience; for example: anxiety can feel like pleasurable excitement, as the body in both mental modes vibrates in a similar state of high energy; or a difficult situation is your challenge to evolve and an opportunity for personal discovery; or peace of mind is your inner state of being, not the possession of external conditions. And so on, all empirically true but under-practiced.

Journal 2020-11-11

I form tears when I’m moved in any meaningful way - so if I produce them in a performance, I’m not pretending, I’m genuinely feeling what I’m doing.

Journal 2020-09-18

Watching performers, I appreciate quality but I don’t get particularly excited by even exquisite technical excellence. Looks attract, certainly, but interest is quickly lost if there is nothing real going on beyond the performance. I detach emotionally when there is anything conceited or contrived. What holds me is real lived human experience, with all its perfect imperfections; something genuine that has emerged in the moment and surprised even the performer.

Journal 2020-04-25

A flow state is when your inner voice has got out of the way and you are free to be one with who you are and what you are doing. It’s easier to get there when lost in the energy of music. I admire good acting that is able to reach the moment just by using imagination and presentness with other performers.