How to know love is love?

"As opposed to a projection of the ego?" asks a song by Solo San.

The lyrics of this song push us to question what love is. For starters, the question with which the song opens alludes to a differentiation between love and a projection of the ego. I take that to mean that projections of the ego are on the other extreme of true love. If these two notions were put on a spectrum, they would be opposites.

If a projection of the ego is not love, then what is?

The day I first heard this song, I caught myself looking at my hands while typing for school. My engagement ring sparkled from the reflection of Christmas lights that hung down my living room window (yes, they will stay on all year); my lo-fi playlist played in the background. I began to wonder to what extent an engagement ring is that – a mere projection of my ego. One that feeds off of our consumerist tendencies.

Can love exist without the embodiment of it in something that feeds our ego, such as a formalized relationship, a sparkly ring, or a marriage?

What the song refers to as a so-called "projection of the ego," to me, refers to the state of infatuation with a person, a thing, a fantasy, a memory. For example, many times during my years of singlehood I caught myself being infatuated with an idea – the idea of a person, the idea of being in a romantic relationship. But to be in a relationship challenges the ego because it forces us to open up our hearts and be vulnerable. The ego generally hates this. I very much resisted opening up because so many of the lessons I learned were ones that scarred my ego. Rejection, anyone?

The song goes on to question a related aspect of the human experience of being in love and/or finding love:

"How do you recognize that what you're looking at, what you are living, is not schizophrenia but is instead a miracle?"

The reference to schizophrenia in the song parallels the use of that same language in a movie I watched recently. The movie was called "You Resemble Me," and in it, the director used schizophrenia as a way to point out the inability of a person to have a stable sense of identity such that it pushed a person to lose touch with reality and to code-switch between reality and insanity.

Here, in the case of the song, the hyperbolic reference to this condition reminded me that (to a much, much less extent than the actual condition, of course) when infatuation strikes, we are more prone to lose ourselves and our touch with reality because it is the ego that takes the center stage. When the ego leads the way, we become infatuated with the short-term rewards we feel when we feed the ego. Without a strong sense of self and an awareness of the difference between our heart's desires and our ego’s desires, we lose touch with our true nature. I believe that our true nature is one of love, of unconditional love. In turn, I believe that a love that is fostered while people are in touch with their true nature is a miracle.

A couple of my own love stories

I think my mom would agree it is a miracle that I got married. I would say it is a miracle I married this young because I‘d been single for so many years, I had started to feel as though I would want a partner. When the universe manifested before me the man of my dreams, it was during a time when I was the most connected to my very own soulful nature. That story about how I started dating and later married someone with whom I feel a soul connection is written in more detail here.

For context, growing up I rarely fantasized about marriage as other friends around me seemed to. My bandwidth to feel was limited throughout my teenage years and early twenties. In fact, I used to master the art of shutting down, especially after a high school relationship that bruised my self-esteem. For a long time, it seemed like I had no idea what love was. Nor was I interested in finding out. My trust issues were through the roof: I used to think that every guy that approached me was trying to play me. Relatable?

I was not interested in finding out what love was because I was so detached from my own emotions, unable to cry or feel the icky feelings that come when you ease into your heart’s vulnerabilities.

That changed when I turned 21. I attribute this change to a special relationship I had in France, le pays de l’amour. I underwent a lot of growth next to someone I dated for a bit. No matter how short or messy a relationship is, I believe all relationships are sites of evolution. And so I evolved. I sought therapy out of a desperation to want to deal with all the feelings I started to feel coming out of that relationship.

This nostalgic breakup spearheaded my healing journey because it made me curious about my attachment style, my communication skills, my emotional baggage, and my thought patterns. A can of worms had been opened and I wanted to understand how to love myself and how to love others. Little by little, I began equipping myself with tools that helped me to draw my own “emotional map” so that I could understand my heart, and I could feel confident about putting it out there for someone to learn about how to navigate it, how to love it. This was my quest to understand love. It later turned into a quest to welcome love. And ever since, I slowly began to create notions of love that made sense to me, and to unlearn all those notions of love that felt unsafe. Those are the thoughts I journal about and it was during this practice, my miracle of love manifested in my life.

The lyrics of this sweet song made me wonder: how can I say with certainty that what I found on the other end of that nostalgic breakup was, in fact, the miracle of love? If I had to put a finger on it, I'd say my current partner is so because my heart and soul feel safe with him. It is a sacred feeling. And, I know it is a miracle because this miracle of love came during a period of time that I was not waiting for someone, but when I had committed myself to love myself first.

Hold up! So, is true love merely a passive act?

I am still figuring all of this out, so take me with a grain of salt.

Based on what I have learned in my quest so far, however, I understand the act of loving as being twofold: there’s a feeling component and a practice component to this whole thing.

The first sentence of the next verse rang true, the latter sentence brought up questions:

"Love is to disappear and to find your soul in the other. True love is 'nothing to take and nothing to add.'"

If true love has nothing to add or subtract, does that mean that love is subtle? And, is love subtle because of its neutrality? I think in general yes, love is neutral when we refer to it in its plain, passive, feeling form.

The feeling form of love:

Love as a feeling – subtle and neutral – is delicate. It's meeting a past lover after many years and feeling like you have nothing to take and nothing to add. No hard feelings, no destabilizing emotions tugging towards excitement or sadness. It just is. When new versions of selves reunite briefly and they reminisce about their younger selves who crossed paths in a past reality, that's a love that just exists as a passive feeling. Untroubled waters. Sort of like the love of nature; it is a love that's felt when we simply appreciate a flower, a sunset, or the ocean. It exists because of happy thoughts attached to a subject and nothing else.

The practice of love:

Another aspect of love is when it takes the active form of a verb. Being married, and having read bell hooks’ perspectives on love, the notion that love is also a verb, and practice, is at the forefront of my life. The song had something to say on this point:

"'I want you to love me,' that's not love. 'I want to love you' – that is love. Love knows exactly who it loves because it is a magic encounter. Few times can one find it, but when it appears it is magical, it changes everything. I hadn't found it – the being who matched me. In a miracle moment, I looked up, and there it was."

The miracle-type love is the one I found at the end of a healing journey. My husband is my light at the end of a tunnel. The miracle-type love, I think, is a soul connection – what the song refers to as a miracle encounter.

I'm young, I'm learning every day still – about myself, about Jon, about love. But had I not graduated from Love School already? After all, I am married. Just like any other school, though, a gap exists between theory and practice, between fantasy and reality, and I am glad that gap exists because I feel like no expert.

The sparkling ring is a symbol of a phenomenon more complex than a projection of the ego (although ego projections are tricky in and of themselves). The phenomenon of love seems to be easy and fleeting sometimes. It’s just a feeling, no? Yet, it becomes a giant puzzle when I consider the practice of love. In other words, it seems like love stands all alone sometimes (when it is in its feeling form); as the song said, love is nothing to take and nothing to add.

But at times, and especially in practice, love seems to encompass other enigmas: projections of the ego among others. So, if the phenomenon of love in its feeling form occurs in the heart and mind, does love crystallize in reality and across time in another location? Perhaps it does – in its active form love exists in the day-to-day actions that make it long-lasting. Perhaps love in its complexity – in the times it does not stand all alone – relies on other things to feel real, and to be felt for a long time. Patience, commitment, awareness, and willpower come to mind. Perhaps love, like us, requires the support of a greater community of little emotions, adverbs, and verbs.

The song ends abruptly. It's a short one. Happy listening!