Love as Doing, Not Feeling

An old financial commercial (or was it some other product?) advertised that the greeks had a lot of different words for love. That's good, and it makes a lot of sense, and there are definitely distinctions from platonic (friends?), erotic (sex?), romantic (really close stuff, but not necessarily sex?), etc.

But another fundamental distinction common to all those is between doing and feeling. I'm still wrapping my head around this. Despite having heard across my life song lyrics that say things like "love is a verb".

I have a lot of trouble with the words "I love you" or more casually and less intensely "love ya!". It takes so little commitment. When you think of it as an action it requires no investment at all. It's pretty easy for it to be a lie. So I hear this and put little stock in it.

There I admit my bias toward loving as a verb. You might say that the person who says "love you!" feels love toward you. What does it mean to feel love? I can understand feeling warmth. Or attraction, or happiness upon seeing someone or giddiness, or a combination of some of those. So I can reluctantly admit maybe love is a convenience word for some combination.

But it makes more sense to me that love as a feeling, mostly means the desire and intention to go to great lengths for the other in your actions, and to go to great lengths on their terms. It makes "tough love" more obvious as an oxymoron.

And we can trust by someone's actions that they loved. For example - you've probably heard a pseudo-Christian phrase "no greater gift than to lay down one's life for one's friends". If a person gave life in service of his or her pals, we'd have few doubters about whether that person loved their pals.

OF COURSE that's not to say dying is the main or most obvious way to love someone. It's an extreme example of how actions evidence love. All kinds of other actions: giving gifts, slapping someone lightly on the back, driving a long distance to visit, spending time walking around town, remembering an important day and saying something about it. Implied here is that someone who loves should be giving something up or sacrificing. But I'm somewhat agnostic on that.

What I feel less agnostic about is that love as a feeling is like the unused french rail line Ligne de Chorges A Barcelonette. An empty curiosity whose function is never carried out.

Let's use another French infrastructure analogy to draw a contrast. Receiving love, or feeling loved seems more like the Bissorte Dam and power plant. A vessel holding something that can be used in reserve, sustains, and helps the greater good.