Finding a definition to love is an endless endeavour. If you were to ask me what it is, it would be possible for me to bring up its many definitions, its counter arguments, or works of art. But there still would not be a satisfactory answer.
And yet, it is a question that I enjoy indulging in all the same. Interesting, isn’t it? ‘Love’ is a familiar word, and the answer to it is intuitive until you have to package it up and phrase it for others. But even without engaging in multiple philosophical conversations with people about it, it’s taken as part of universal knowledge, or common sense.
For some context, I used to hate love. When I was younger, my understanding of it was only what was told to me in the many books I read. As one can imagine, the type of love depicted most commonly in the media was romantic love. And with such representations, it was limited to the cliches of ‘sacrificing the world for you’ or the brooding male lead finally opening up to the female lead. That’s so stupid. I thought. Why would I want the world to be sacrificed for me? Why would anyone entertain a broody man? At that time, I felt greatly irritated by love because what I knew it to be was only in the limited representations I was given to consume.
It was only much later on, when I slowly gained more sentience (post-teenager), that I started seeing love in the everyday moments I had taken for granted. The dinners I returned to at the end of the week with all my favourite dishes, late night suppers laughing and talking about everything beneath the stars when really, we should be preparing for the next morning’s tutorials, the excitement for the craft that I chose to do. These mundane moments that make up my life’s routine opened up definitions of love to me. It was only when I understood this multiplicity that I realised that my life was so full of love – that which I have received in abundance, and that which I have given in return.
When I took on such a lens, I have also come to accept that there may not be a point in categorising and labelling what love is. To give form is to give an ending, and why would one ever put a cap on such a beautiful thing?
My journey only tells the tale of one facet of love. Being such an elusive, uncapturable thing, love cannot be pinned down by a single explanation. The best way to understand it, then, is to take its glorious multiplicity in its wholeness. Just as accumulating more experiences has opened up different representations of what love is and what it could be for me, we hope to invite you on a similar journey in this series.
Our contributors have spun tales of budding romances, surprising epiphanies, and lingering ruminations. You will find that, in these stories, love transforms. Quiet whispers take root, growing into deep appreciation and awe, or surging into something far greater: an experience that transcends the self.
Knowing is in completion, but though this pursuit may never reach an ending, perhaps you may come away realising that maybe love isn’t that hard to define after all.
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About the Author
Wan Xin is a Year 2 Anthropology & Literature student. If she’s not buried in her readings, she’s probably booking her next flight, overanalysing a film, or pretending she has a handle on life.