Sure, I know love. It is a feeling, right? Is it an action, too? Or is it a sequence of actions? Is it formulaic? When I read my last post on love , I am forcibly reminded that perhaps I do not know what love is it all.

Written by Joni Mitchell, Both Sides Now is a song whose lyrics have always haunted me, this stanza in particular:

I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It’s love’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know love at all

As I try and unpack this sentiment in my heart now that I am clearly past childhood (or am I?), I have a feeling that the way I have experienced love throughout my entire life has been remarkably selfish in some ways. I reduce love to (non)actions. I can do this, but I cannot do that, etc. 

What does that really mean? I do not know except in hypothetical scenarios that, well, are hypotheses on what I ‘might’ or ‘might not’ do in a given circumstance. Perhaps, however, I give life limits when I imagine what I either can or cannot do. 

Heinz von Foerster developed an ethical imperative, which states: Act always so as to increase the total number of choices. I find this statement profound in many ways. When I look at the sum of my life and various specifics, I do not see I have embodied this principle very well, if at all.

Recent events in my life actually call into question the extent to which this imperative currently serves as a guiding beacon in my relationships with others. I am obtuse. I am aloof, and I have discovered long-cycle patterns of behavior that take years to unfold. My discovery of these long-cycle patterns provide fuller context into my assertion that I am broken as a man.

What is love? Unlike some in this world who cling to ‘absolute’ truth, I cannot definitively say one way or another. What I do feel, though, is that the quest to love others deeply has intrinsic value in ways that affect past, present, and future. Whose past? Whose present? Whose future?

Nothing should ever be taken for granted.