Love / Like / Lust

“Love” is one of the many problems facing the English language.

Not the various concepts it represents, but the word itself.

Old joke:
“I love a parade but I wouldn’t want to go to bed with one.”*

(* PornHub
excluded.)

We use “love” to describe various feelings (“I love coffee in the morning.”) and emotions (“I love my kitty.”) and opinions (“I love that idea.”).

But as author Andrew Vachss points out:  Love is a verb.

Love should be confined to what we do or show.  It should be an action with concrete results, not merely a flurry of fuzzy feelings.

(None of this is brand new nor startling original; better minds than mine have commented on this for centuries.)

My opinion carries about as much weight as spitting against the wind in a hurricane, but I’d argue we should start by dividing love / like / lust and using them as follows:

===== LOVE =====

“A selfless action that helps another.”

This covers acts large and small.  

• Raising a child from birth to young adulthood should be an act of love.

• Feeding a person who is hungry should be an act of love.

• Donating clothes to a charity should be an act of love.

Caveat:
One must constantly question and analyze one’s actions to make sure they’re not really selfish motives in disguise.

Too often, alas, they are actually thinly disguised transactional deals:  

• “I’ll take care of you as a child so you’ll look after me as an elderly person.” 

• “I’ll buy you dinner if you do me a favor.” 

• “I want a big tax write off for my donation.”

An act of love should be done with no expectation of recognition, reciprocation, or reward.

You help someone because not only it is ethically and morally the right thing to do, but because it creates and reinforces a societal pattern:  Treat others the way you want to be treated.

This includes the Biblical injunction to “love thine enemies.”  If, for example, there’s a person in your life whom you despise, who causes great trouble and distress for you, if that person is unjustly accused of wrongdoing and you have proof they’re falsely accused, it is an act of love to provide that proof and spare them from injustice even if you want nothing further to do with them.

Selfless love benefits all people, even if individual acts of love never directly benefit the person doing them.

“Love” is the only word on this short list that carries any ethical or moral weight.

===== LIKE ===== 

“A feeling of enjoyment or approval.”

Much of what we call “love” is actually just an intense emotional enjoyment of another person or thing.

There’s nothing wrong or derogatory with that.

I know of many loveless marriages where the partners act out of their own self-interest but enjoy each other’s company.

I know of many loving marriages where injury or illness robs one partner of the ability to participate or reciprocate fully in the relationship, but the caregiving partner selflessly continues to provide that care even though there is no longer any personal joy in it.

“Like” runs a gamut of intensity and hues.  The “like” I feel for a good hamburger is different from the “like” I feel for classical music, and the “like” I feel for classical music is different from the “like” I feel for Hank Williams.

The emotion or feeling of liking someone or something carries no ethical or moral weight.

You can absolutely like Goldfinger as a fictional character so long as you don’t try to emulate him by blowing up Ft. Knox with a nuclear bomb.

You can like with varying degrees of intensity any number of people you encounter from spouses of friends and family to charming scoundrels so long as you do not act on that feeling in a way that would threaten harm to others.

Don’t put the move on your best friend’s partner.

Don’t look the other way when that charmer tries to cheat someone.

Like anyone or anything you wish, but be wise in how you express it.

Not everything needs to be shared.

===== LUST =====

“A desire for pleasure or satisfaction.”

If “like” is passive, “lust” is active.

You want something.

You may lust for gold or power or sexual satisfaction, but it’s always an inwardly directed desire.

Mind you, among fully informed consenting partners lust can be the basis of a successful long term relationship.

If one partner wants sexual satisfaction and is willing to show kindness and compassion and support in return, and the other wants to feel emotionally and physically safe and is willing to grant sexual favors in return, they may find a mutually agreeable long term relationship to their advantage.

Both of them lust for something, be it sexual gratification or emotional security.

The English language primarily confines “lust” to earthy appetites i.e., “a lust of life”.

That carries an implication of hedonism.

Again, the feeling of lust or the desire for hedonism in and of itself carries no ethical or moral weight.

But because it actively leans towards the gratification of the self, it’s dangerous.

Too often we can rationalize our worst behaviors by calling our lusts “love”.

Lust is 180-degrees the opposite of love.

It seeks to serve the self, not others.

Love -- acting selflessly to help others – can serve as an effective brake on the desires – fiscal or physical – of lust.

It provides the foundation of empathy that civilized societies need.

Properly controlled and guided, lust can be enormously satisfying and harmless to others.

But it’s always self-centered, pointing inward, not outward.

It’s better to live in a culture based on love than on lust.

In summary:

We need to be more precise in our language, because language shapes our thoughts and our thoughts guide our actions.

Speak rarely of love but show it often.

Be careful how we show what we like.

Temper lust with love.

© Buzz Dixon