Moments of Love

Understanding and love play different roles in the different relationships that we have over the course of our lives. We might say that the love shared between friends generates a sense of belonging; family love creates a reliable sense of comfort and romantic love a deep intimacy of body and mind. Of course, having just read that list you might think of many counter-examples; Human relationships, in their infinite configurations and complexity, defy categorisation into these three groups. Rather than think about types of love that apply to types of relationships – “friend love” for friends and “romantic love” for lovers – I would like to instead look at the fact that we can feel different kinds of love for the same person at different times without always consciously processing it. There are certainly times where we feel as intimately close to our friends as we ever have been with a lover and arguably many lovers spend most of their time behaving like friends. Equally important I think, if we are honest with ourselves, most of the time we are not feeling love for friends, families or even partners. We know we love them and we remember what it felt like when we realised we did, we’re just not feeling it right now. I am not talking about falling out of love – I am talking about the fact that our feelings aren’t timeless, they relate directly to what’s going on with us at the time. It is our minds that later make the conscious move of saying ‘that moment that I just shared with this person means that they fall into the category of people that I love’ – a category that can be more static than our capricious emotions. Because of that far more conscious move, what we say we feel and what we actually feel do not always match up perfectly. While this act of consciously categorising our relationships the actual feelings that comprise them are usually more varied than we allow ourselves to think about.

I would like to examine some of these ‘moments of love’ that cause us to consciously think that we love a person. In doing so I hope I will shed a bit more light on what I mean by ‘synchronicity of consciousness’, understanding and love. If love is understanding and a synchronicity of two consciousness’, then for the most part, that synchronicity seems to only really occur over a series of moments. It is the way we attend to and treat such moments that helps us pin down and define our relationships. What follows is a rather hurried look at some ‘moments of love’, I am sure that many, many more exist and I hope to hear of and discuss more examples in the coming months.

A moment of love can be one of recognition or coordinated thinking. For example, think of a conversation with a friend or a stranger that you have had where you just ‘click’. Sometimes that sensation of ‘clicking’ is one of the reasons that we enter into a romantic relationship, more often it’s just a good chat between friends. We tend to surround ourselves with people that we ‘click’ with and consider them loved ones but we shouldn’t understate the sense of affirmation and joy that one gets from revealing your thoughts to another and have them say “yes, I agree – and what’s more, what you’ve said reminds me of this thing…” A conversation that can continue down this structure almost indefinitely is a moment of love – an affirmation of your beliefs that is also productive. That is certainly not to rule out productive disagreements, as opposed to destructive arguments, as a moment of love; the common ground between a discussion based on agreement of principles and an intelligent ‘argument’ is that both require a deep understanding of the core meaning of what the other is saying and the way their reasoning is developing. Either way in such instances we do feel a moment of love (of affirmation of self, of belief, of discovery of another and a newfound sense of connection) but it is also often so fleeting that we do not put a name to the sensation. Just because we fail to name it does not mean it isn’t there.

We enjoy talking about ourselves, our feelings, our beliefs and our views of the world. This is because if we talk about such things with a person who will fully understand what we’re saying and how we arrived at our conclusions we will be revealing ourselves to another in a relatively unfiltered and pure form. If they share or at least understand these ‘core’ attitudes to life and reveal to us this understanding by replying with complementary anecdotes about their own situations, experiences and views we will inevitably feel acknowledged and understood – loved. Of course, such conversations are not easy to spark, especially with strangers but even with friends and family. The often unspoken contract of a romantic relationship is that we will be honest with each other about how we feel and what we think about ourselves, each other and the world. This kind of relationship (where sharing 'core' attitudes is implicit) is highly conducive to more intimate conversations that are closer to a pure sharing of self, which is why romantic partnership is the deepest form of love – more real moments of love occur more often. In our day-to-day lives and in most of our encounters though, we don’t just talk about our values, or ourselves we talk about something: hobbies, a game, a film, music what we have been doing. This is no less important – things we like or know define us too.

Some hobbies and pastimes make us feel unique; others make us feel part of a group. Either way, when we take part in such activities we configure our minds to work within the bounds of the activity. When playing a game of football, all the players minds are attending to the game – the very fact they are playing the game sets their minds working in a way that thinks about things like ‘where is the ball?’ ‘What is the position of relevant players on the pitch?’ ‘Which player should I be marking?’ etc. They are less likely to be thinking about the election or the movie they saw on Friday night. The fact that their minds are in ‘football mode’ allows them to work as a team with the faith that their teammates are thinking in a similar way – a team sport is all about synchronicity of body and mind. When there is effective team play there is a feeling of exhilaration and ecstasy, there is also a strong sense of camaraderie among teammates; this is because they will feel a moment of love when they play well together.

To varying degrees any hobby or act of recreation, be it active or passive, involves setting up your mind in a certain way. The more you immerse yourself in a given activity the easier it is to configure your mind to that task. Some elements of these configurations transfer into your general thinking: this is why many think team based sports build characters, but similarly a movie buff may be more prone to think of their lives like a movie narrative, or at least find themselves making analogies based on influential movies.

When we talk about an interest with someone who shares it we can talk more comfortably because we know that we are talking the same language, because when we engage in the conversation both our minds will think about that song, that film, that match in the way that our time spent on that particular interest has trained us to think. The fact that we are talking about something external from us allows for an easy slip into synchronicity of consciousness in a way that there is simply no guarantee of when talking about values or feelings. Most friendships are built around moments of love occurring through shared activities or talking about shared interests because these things facilitate clear communication without confusion. I have a lot of affection for people that I can talk with on fairly niche subjects at length.

Communication through or about a medium that we are knowledgeable about is a safe act of revealing oneself and learning more about another. It is even relatively easy to talk about hobbies that other people don’t share because we are animated confident, passionate when talking about a thing that we have spent a lot of time thinking about. But we feel particularly excited when we discover that an acquaintance likes something we like, like a band, that we didn’t think they might have done – it gives you something to talk about but more importantly it brings you closer to understanding that acquaintances conscious process’. If both Joe and I like Metallica then I have an avenue of understanding him that was unavailable to me before – I can ask him what he likes about Metallica, listen to Metallica and make a start on figuring out if his consciousness works similarly to mine when he listens to them. In doing so I can tangentally learn more about the core 'him' and become aware of a synchronicity of consciousness that I was not aware of before. I can in some way get to know him by our common experience and talking about that common experience without having to ask probing questions of him. A shared interest does not guarantee a moment of love - It may be that Joe likes Metallica for reasons that I can not understand, and that what he sees in them adds nothing to my own experience of the band. In such an instance there was an opportunity for a moment of love but none was forthcoming. That we failed to connect is of no concern; we were only discussing Metallica and there was no conspicuous or even conscious decision by either of us to use the common ground to try to ‘connect’ so we don’t feel like anything was lost. Of course, the fact that we failed to connect even over common ground may play a part in me not going out of my way to speak to Joe any more.

It is a truism that women say that a ‘good sense of humour’ is the most important quality in a prospective partner. What do they mean by ‘good sense of humour’? In this case, I think a ‘good sense of humour’ means ‘he will know what makes me laugh and laugh at my jokes’. Humour and laughter are in themselves almost as mysterious as love and there are a multitude of different tastes. Women are not saying they want to date comedians who will tell them jokes; we are not talking about gags and puns but belly laughs that catch you unawares. To make someone laugh on a personal level both teller and listener need to be, to some extent ‘on the same page’. When two people share a joke, particularly a private one, there is a connection of consciousness’ – the laughter is an expression of the moment of love. When someone laughs at my jokes loudly and sincerely I feel loved and I feel equally loved when someone makes a joke that makes me laugh in the same way. Because good, personal, humour cuts straight into the way you think and requires conscious or unconscious understanding of your mind. To make someone laugh requires an expectation of what they will find funny, and equally the act of laughing says, “I get it”. Genuine laughter says more than “I get it” though, it also says “I get you”. When a woman say she wants a partner with a ‘good sense of humour’ she really isn’t just trying to make the funny, fat, balding guy feel better – she’s trying to say ‘I want a partner with whom I can share moments of connection with. A partner who I ‘get’ and who ‘gets’ me.’ We tend to befriend people that we find funny for the same reason – sincere laughter is a moment of love.

So far I have mostly talked about moments of love that affirm our selves and subtly reinforce the common ground between us and so aid two consciousness’ communication and understanding of each other. Such moments are the meat of friendships, but in different combinations and under different circumstances they are the stuff of great romances as well. What becomes of moments of love is down to how we react to them. Quite sensibly we do not usually think anything of the moment but in some way log away all such experiences for reference later when we are prompted to make a judgement about the person in question’s ‘character’ or our relationship to them. Such prompts to attend to our experiences can come from without or within but are almost always some time after the moment(s) of love. However, some moments can be so powerful, can resonate so strongly with us that the moment of love can also be a moment of realisation of love. Rather, we should say, a moment of definition of love. Such moments of realisation or definition tend to be so powerful that they command our assent – at that moment we know we love the person truly and passionately and have an overwhelming urge to convey such feelings immediately – to do less would be to conceal a part of ourselves, end the moment of understanding and cut short the moment of love.

One such experience is a sensation I have felt often. When we get to know a person well their behaviour becomes familiar and we can start to predict how they might react to certain things happening. Just to clarify here; this kind of understanding is not necessarily evidence of love; we all know people who’s behaviour seems so transparent, so obvious and mechanical that at times it seems as though they are reading from a script. These are not people I love; these are people that bore me. I feel that understand them, yes, but only because their minds seem to me to be so simple and so straightforward that I can not understand how they might have ended up so uninteresting - and don’t care to find out. I treat such people as human consciousness’ out of social convention but in my mind I do not often recognise them as conscious aproper - not like myself, my friends and my family.

When we reach a stage of understanding with someone that also does provide interest, stimulation and affirmation that person does not become a bore. We have inklings of how these people ‘work’ but that only spurs us on to know them better. In our encounters with these people we can get so caught up in the particulars of life and in the learning of the new that sometimes a familiar gesture, phrase or reaction can cause a sudden and shocking reminder of how well we understand each other already. Such moments of re-recognition can sometimes trigger us to think, “ahh, that is so you” and as an afterthought “And that’s part of why I love you”. These are the moments when your girlfriend is being so herself that you just have to lean over and kiss her. This act is a moment of love – she has revealed herself to you and you recognise the revelation as being a true revelation of her. The fact that you recognise her reaffirms the closeness between you and the act of kissing her, out of the blue from her perspective, affirms her in-herself – it reinforces for her that she can receive affection simply for being herself. Unlike the other moments of love above, this one involves a sharp realisation/definition of what the sensation actually means in terms of the relationship between the two of you. Such moments can occur between friends and do not always result in a kiss, although a kiss can occur and can equally force a redefinition in the relationship (but that is another topic).

Here is another example of a moment of love that triggered a realisation of love. This example relates to family love, specifically the love between a mother and child. A mother behaves in a certain way to her child because of love, but also out of social obligation, a sense of duty and a biological urge. That biological urge and social responsibility could probably be enough to maintain parental bonds without the feeling of love actually being there. Of course, all three feed into each other in the long run. I would describe the source of the strength of a mothers love as stemming from the fact that she has a privileged perspective on her child’s consciousness growing and developing – throughout most of childhood the mother understands her child’s consciousness better than the child itself does. The reciprocation at this stage comes from the fact that the parents are the first consciousness’ that a child has a chance to encounter so for a long time the child understands it’s parents better than any other people in the world. The child is at a disadvantage due to lack of experience, but this is probably why in many cases parents display more love to a child than they initially get repaid in return!

Kirsty O’Connor has an interesting blog entry about how the first time she felt in love with her daughter was not the first time she held her but the first time she got a glimpse of her individual character at dinnertime – the first peeks into the workings of her daughters newly developing individual consciousness.

“I also realised, looking back that it was at this time that I felt an overwhelming sense of falling in love.... with Carmel. I’ve never in my life experienced love at first sight but, like I’m sure many mums do, I expected to feel the all-consuming, overwhelming love I’d heard so much about, the minute she was born. I didn’t. Perhaps when I first put her on my breast, or at least by the time we took her home from the hospital. I didn’t feel it. I felt nervous and exhausted and very protective over my tiny baby, but not love. I didn’t know her yet…

…I love dinner time, it’s intimate and gives our baby a chance to assert her independence, allowing us a great opportunity for getting to know the real Carmel.”

– Kirsty O’Connor, courtesy of askamum.

These, then are ‘moments of love’ – times where we feel two consciousness’ meeting, times where we feel we are closer to another and so closer to ourselves. They increase the affection we feel for another and they can make us realize how important our connections to these specific others are to our self-esteem and happiness. It is important to distinguish moments of love from love as a continuum or a narrative with a beginning, middle and an end as such conceptions do not match up with our experience of our feelings. We do use these moments of emotion to help define and pin down relationships or give turn them into a story of distinct phases. Of course, the act of defining certainly does have a further effect on the way we feel. For now though, we have concentrated on the basic moments from which we build a picture of others, ourselves and how we feel. We have not yet explored how these moments of love add up to defining one person as a lover and another as a friend and what else may affect these decisions. Nor have we begun to touch on the most famous ‘moment of love’ – sex.