Love Perceptions
It Was Never About the Toy
I used to think it was absurd that people could love objects.
Things that cannot feel, cannot respond, cannot even notice your existence… how could anyone form an emotional bond with them?
A colleague once told me about a customer who refused to replace his broken robotic lawnmower.
“We’ve shared so many memories,” the man said.
The machine even had a name: Mathilda.
I remember finding that strange. Almost amusing.
I had heard similar things before: people attached to cartoon characters, anime figures, statues. I could understand it intellectually, but emotionally, it didn’t make sense to me.
Until something shifted.
A few years ago, I was sorting through old clothes and carrying some boxes down to the cellar. While moving things around, I came across a transparent storage box filled with my daughter’s old belongings.
Inside were her favorite plush toys: two small bunnies and a little cat we had named Katzy.
They were pressed against the plastic wall, slightly deformed.
Squeezed. Crumpled. Forgotten.
And suddenly, something in me broke.
I didn’t expect it… but I started to cry. Not gently. Not quietly. It came in a wave that caught me completely off guard.
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Even now, as I write this, I can feel it again… that tightness in my chest, that unexpected ache… my tears falling again.
For a brief moment, those toys were no longer just objects.
They carried something alive.
Memories.
Laughter.
A version of my daughter that no longer exists in the same way.
It wasn’t the objects themselves.
It was everything they held.
I stood there, looking at them, and felt an urge that didn’t quite make sense: to take them out, to place them gently somewhere, to give them… dignity? Peace? A better place?
As if they could feel.
As if they deserved to be remembered.
And in that moment, something became clear.
I don’t know if what I felt was love.
But it was real. And it asked for nothing in return.
There was no expectation.
No need for a response.
No possibility of being loved back.
Still, part of me wanted to rescue them, to spare them from being ignored forever in a dusty cellar. Somehow, I wished them a peaceful existence… even if I knew they were just fabric and stuffing.
Just a quiet, genuine wish: be well.
That’s when I understood something deeper: perhaps this is what real love is. You wish someone well… not because you expect anything in return, not because you’ll benefit from it, but simply because the feeling is there.
Maybe love isn’t defined by reciprocity.
Maybe it doesn’t need to be returned to be real.
Maybe love is simply the ability to feel deeply… without needing anything back.
Real love doesn’t ask.
It doesn’t negotiate.
It doesn’t even need to be seen.
Sometimes, it just lives quietly…
in a memory,
in a moment,
or inside a forgotten plush toy in a cellar.
