Love is Ever Present
There is a universal truth that we all live with every day. It transcends nationality, gender, politics, skin color and language. It exists for every single one of us to do with as we choose. Despite our diversity and all the challenges we are faced with as human beings, we have one pure shared thing in common: love is ever present.
It is intangible yet ever present, elusive but also surrounding us. It inspires and motivates, creates and conquers. Love builds us up and tears us apart, but its cycles are essential for the development of the human experience. It is the single motivating factor in almost everything we do. Sometimes you have to dig really, really deep to trace it, but it’s always there. Love is ever present.
It’s a Chemical Thing
If we want to take a practical approach to the idea, what can we say about this primitive emotion that is grounding and easy for us to process? Science says it’s influenced by external stimuli, which can create a hormonal response internally. Actions that can be interpreted as love can impact on dopamine levels which, when elevated can increase your focus and attention. As our feelings or experiences of the emotion increase, we pay more attention to the object of that love – a new dress, a person, an activity we enjoy or our work.
This is a rudimentary overview of course but doesn’t it make sense? When we feel unhappy about something and find it difficult to maintain focus on, isn’t it usually because we don’t love it? Countless studies have proved that people who are happy with and enjoy their work are more productive, that artists who feel passionate about their work are more prolific and surely that explains the incessant stream of dialogue that hijacks almost every conversation when one of your friends falls in love!
Culture vs Passion
Love is biological but also cultural. We have learned behaviours around it based on our cultural experiences of it and many of us have been taught to conform in our expression of it. Some cultures believe in duty over love, while others believe that passion is the fuel of life and passion of course is the fire that is stoked by love. Whatever the outward expression of it is through work, leisure or relationships, the singular feeling of love is common to us all. Love is ever present.
Love is Ever Present
The world seems to be going through a particularly turbulent phase right now and many people are feeling overwhelmed and dejected. But for every piece of news that is shocking and frustrating and heart breaking, there is a story of love. Every day, everywhere, small acts of it are taking place. Smiling at a stranger on the train is a small but significant moment of love. It says I see you, we are not enemies, we have love in common.
Like the exchange of touch – from a reassuring hand on your shoulder to the palms of someone’s hands flat against your spine. The intimacy of skin on skin between parent and baby and the warm enveloping security of a hug. Beyond touch, every day there are human beings reaching out to each other to offer food or shelter or comfort. Across the globe human beings are standing up together to march in solidarity for rights – to be ourselves, to pursue what we love and to love who we want in the ways we choose.
From saying the actual words to sharing in an experience, from a look in someone’s eyes to the sharing of touch.
Love is ever present.