What is love and how do we love? These were the questions that a few Rose scholars got together last Saturday to discuss. At first, these questions seem so big that you have no idea where even to start, but Antonio, our discussion leader, kept asking us questions that led us in the right direction and that made us think. He presented to us an account of love that originally was taken from M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled, and it reads: “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” I personally really like the idea of love being an extension of one’s own self to another person, but I think there might be some issues with this quote anyway.

First of all, I think the word purpose implies full-knowledge of what will indeed make another person grow, and I think that the word intent might be better suited as that does not imply that you have to fully understand the needs of another person in order to love them (because how do you fully understand the needs of another?). Secondly, I think the word spiritual is unnecessary as it only implies a kind of relationship with God that quite frankly I do not see as important for this discussion about love. Lastly, and most importantly, I do not really agree with the general idea that you have to make another person grow in order to be able to love them. I think all loving relationships have ups and downs, and I do not think that you necessarily stop loving someone when you are at a low point, even if it leads you to say something you later regret to that person. I do not think it is even humanly possible to ALWAYS make someone grow, and therefore this quote seems to suggest to me that the love comes and goes and that it is not a constant thing. And while I do not think that love is static, I also do not personally like to think of it as that fleeting. To me, love always seemed like the greater force behind a relationship that generally leads it on the right track, rather than a switch that is either on or off in a relationship.

This of course leads us to the question of where the limit for natural conflict in a relationship leads up to abuse of another person. We discussed this last Saturday as well and people seemed to have very differing views on the matter. I do not think there is an easy answer to this question, but I do think it is very important. I also got the feeling that the definitions of love that we looked at tried very clearly to make a boundary between abuse and love, saying that it is either or, but as my argument above suggests, I do not think it is that clear cut. Naturally, there is some limit because we can all agree on situations that are not lovable and simply abusive, but just because we cannot define that limit I do not think it is called for to mold the definition of love into one that is honestly quite hard to follow if you are human and therefore prone to ups and downs in relationships.