What is love?
Poetically and philosophically, love is a disposition towards the other, and towards the self as other. Love is not the relationship but is what characterizes the relationship. Love is not a choice, rather love entails choices.
Scientifically, love manifests a particular bio-chemical reality (i.e., dopamine and endorphin responses / exchanges) that is perceived as certain emotive responses and that combine to create an attitude toward the beloved.
Love’s occurrence is intimately connected with knowledge of the beloved, even at its very beginning. Take newborn babies:
Neonatal biology and neurology approach consensus concerning their acceptance of prenatal olfactory learning.[1] Thus against viewing the earliest human disposition as faith or trust, the infant already ‘knows’ (or pre-understands) her mother’s scent, and is preferentially attracted to it, through the infant’s lived experience of being (indirectly) in relationship with the mother through the infant’s environment (i.e., the uterus).[2]
Yet though particular to her, the scent is not the sum total of who the mother is.[3] Instead, being guided and soothed by the familiar and pre-understood scent, the neonate is welcomed and introduced—through the opening of her senses and the development of her pre-understandings—to the wonder of her nearly totally unknown mother.
So at its origin, love is an experience of overwhelming wonder and newness within a context of remarkable familiarity. Infants accept this without question. For adults, already beyond this stage of easy acceptance, love necessarily comes as surprise.
Love is not planned or predictable. I do not ‘become’ in love but more aptly fall in love. As such I am caught unawares, out of control, and disorientated in respect of ‘my world’. I am, in a sense, out of myself as always seeking (toward) my beloved: I do not simply love, but am properly ‘in’ love. Hence, love is always bigger than me and envelops my life.
Love is creative and life-giving. So when we “make love” we see the creativity of our love-making gazing back at us in the faces of the children who are gifted to us. Love, then, is the stuff of life that brings about life, and happens in and through daily living.
Love involves knowledge of the beloved and always seeks to know further but love, equally, defies the rational: love is without the reasonableness of reciprocity. Thus we do not merely accept nor trade love: love is not measured but lavished. We revel in it, offering and receiving it as gift.
Finally, when the emotion fades, love still remains. Love may be re-evoked as a feeling, like when films or stories (our own included) prompt a response of love. The durable quality of this feeling we may call a “mood,” a prevailing atmosphere like a kitchen—now empty—redolent of certain spices, used and reused.
[1] See J. Winberg and R. H. Porter, “Olfaction and human neonatal behaviour: clinical applications,” in Acta Paediatr 87 (1998): 6-10; Benoist Schaal, Luc Marlier, Robert Soussignan, “Olfactory function in the human fetus: evidence from selective neonatal responsiveness to the odor of amniotic fluid,” in Behavioral Neuroscience 112, no.6 (1998): 1438-1449; R. H. Porter, “The biological significance of skin-to-skin contact and maternal odours,” in Acta Paediatr 93 (2004): 1560-1562; Katsumi Mizuno, Aki Ueda, “Antenatal olfactory learning influences infant feeding,” in Early Human Development 76 (2004): 83-90.
[2] Where earlier studies held the hypothesis that neonatal olfactory preferences “were either unlearned, i.e., genetically determined, or learned prior to birth” (Winberg and Porter, “Olfaction,” 8, emphasis mine), later studies concluded that, “the soothing effect of amniotic odour may reflect the infants’ familiarity with that scent resulting from prenatal exposure and learning.” Porter, “Skin-to-Skin contact,” 1562. This perspective is reinforced by broader, more recent findings where “prenatal learning of olfactory (chemosensory) stimuli has been demonstrated in all the major vertebrate groups.” Peter G. Hepper, Deborah L. Wells, “Prenatal Olfactory Learning in the Domestic Dog” in Chemical Senses 31 (2006): 207-212, 207.
[3] Studies do not show whether neonates can differentiate among lactating women, only that they can distinguish between lactacting and non-lactating women. See Porter, “Biological Significance, 1561.