On love.
I have been trying to tease apart love for a long time. What is it, and why do I long for it so much? I think I am coming closer to an answer: love is rewinding time. It is revisiting a childhood I thought I had lost forever, and recreating the care, intimacy, comfort, and lightheartedness I felt then.
To be loved is to be cared for. My needs and well-being matter not only to me and my parents, but to my lover. This external source of support feels deeply restful when I spend every day fighting for my own interests. For a while, I can set aside my worries about survival, because someone is looking out for me and has my back. I feel like a child again, back in the cradle of my parents’ arms.
As children, we are constantly cuddled, kissed, and held by our parents. That contact fades with age, as we work to present ourselves as strong, independent beings, and touch becomes something of a social taboo. Yet beneath the hardened shell is the same vulnerable body that longs to be caressed and held. Love is the one excuse we have for being touched and embraced by another person, the only socially accepted road back to physical intimacy.
Tending to each other, physically and psychologically, fosters a sense of safety and comfort. It is the same safety I feel each time I return to my parents’ home. For a brief time, I can finally drop my guard and be carefree. These moments are glimpses of the childhood we lost, when we felt this way all the time. They let my ever-buzzing mind idle, and in that stillness, play becomes possible.
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Love is characterized by play. Play was universal in childhood, but as we grow up, we seem to lose the ability, even though we know it remains vital. It brings pleasure and joy, which is why we pick up guitars and tennis rackets. Play creates an artificial world, temporarily set apart from the outside world and from time, where we can direct our faculties toward something other than survival. We submit to the rules of that world within a world, and in return it gives us the structure and purpose the greater world never offered.
In love, flirtation and the game of attraction are play. Together they build a world of two, outside the confines of time and space. As in any play, we forget our worldly roles and become absorbed in each other. Teasing and joking back and forth bring lightheartedness and joy, like the ball traded across a tennis net. Love, though, has less defined structure, goals, and movements. Perhaps the aimless conversations we have with those we love are what elevate love above other forms of play. The ambiguity draws out our curiosity and our desire to explore and create together. In each moment, we ourselves are forging the structures and goals. We feel relaxed because we know these exchanges are low-stakes for our ultimate survival.
These are the same feelings of joy and lightheartedness I once felt playing with Lego or a game of drop the handkerchief. Their ultimate source may differ, but they are precious, even sacred, because as adults we rarely find them anywhere else.
In love, we are carried back to childhood, or rather, the memories of childhood rush forward to meet us in the present. It is paradise lost and then regained. It is magical because it may be the only way to cross time and revisit, recreate, or relive a world we know is long gone. By reawakening those feelings, love makes us feel rejuvenated, and that is why we desire it so much.
11.6.2026
