Love is a choice, because from the available options I have before me, I choose which path to follow. It is a choice because I must choose the path I follow. Even not selecting a path is a choice, the choice not to choose and let “fate” decide for me, which upon “allowing fate to decide,” I simply choose the path that was suggested. Like if I were standing at an ice cream stand trying to decide what flavour of ice cream to get, so I ask my buddy who suggests I get chocolate, so I then ask the server for chocolate ice cream.
However, love is more complicated than purchasing ice cream. I cannot simply get it, and then my ice cream issues are resolved for good. I cannot order ice cream and expect to have that ice cream forever. Whether I like it or not, the ice cream will slowly melt if I leave it unattended (faster if it is particularly warm out). I could place it in my freezer to try to preserve it, but then the ice cream will degrade over time there too. The freezer helps, but it doesn’t prevent my ice cream from degrading eventually. I can choose to eat it, enjoying it in the moment, or I can save it for later, when it will not quite be the same as it was in the moment.
Another thing I might consider is reconstituting the ice cream. I could rebuild it, or reinforce it. Make it better, or even simply maintain it through some strange process. This is where the analogy to ice cream starts to break down. After all, have you ever heard of someone “maintaining” their ice cream? Love is certainly not ice cream, though in the moment, it might seem like it.
Perhaps a better analogy is fire; love is like fire, burning fuel to maintain its energetic form. But that becomes key to the situation; there is fuel needed to keep the fire burning. Take the fuel away, and the fire is extinguished. When the fuel is used up, more fuel must be added, lest the fire is extinguished again. I can start a new fire if the old one goes out, but then it is a new fire and not the old fire. They may appear the same, providing warmth and light, but they are not quite the same. In fact, it seems like the fire isn’t the same from moment to moment either. Its shape and size are constantly changing, which alters the amount of warmth and light it provides from moment to moment. Fire is the epitome of change.
Like fire, love too needs fuel to burn. Love’s fuel is effort and interest. Interest is the part most people, I think, are already familiar with. When I talk about “love and first sight,” I am talking about interest; I am fond of that person’s appearance, and so I love them. But this sort of love is in the moment again. This is eros. My interest is transitory, and may fade as their appearance changes with time. If my interest fades, I’ve heard people say that it “wasn’t really love, because true love doesn’t fade.” True love, it seems, is eternal and infinite.
If true love is to be eternal and infinite (at least as far as I am able to confirm it is), it will have to last as long as I am able to confirm it. This amounts to the love lasting as long as I am still alive. If I stoke my love with effort, I can maintain it for as long as I wish, but then my love is not as simple as mere eros. My love must be something a bit different.
I can still have a love based on eros, but then my appreciation will have something to do with the changing nature of my subject’s immediate features. It cannot be those features themselves, unless I change what I appreciate with every passing moment. Perhaps that is the point though. Perhaps I ought to change what I consider to be beauty with every changing moment. If I do this, then my love will last much longer.
Alternatively, I could choose to appreciate more mediate features of my subject, features that are less susceptible to change. Internal qualities seem less prone to change, but they are not as static as I might want to believe. I am not the man I was 20 years ago. I value different things; desire different things. As my subject changes, so too do I change. It would be so much easier if my subject and I didn’t have to keep changing over time.
This then is the key to a lasting love, or “true love,” as I’ve often heard it described. Not to attempt to find that which does not change, as there is nothing in this world that does not change. I could choose to do as Plato did and fabricate an imaginary realm of unchanging Forms to appreciate, but then I would not love anything about this world. If I claimed to love something about this world, really all I’d have admitted is that I love the world only inasmuch as it resembles the Forms; it is the Forms that I truly love.
To love in a changing world requires me to put an effort into my act of loving. Like the fire, I have to keep adding fuel to my love. I have to keep putting an effort into love to maintain it. My love will last forever, if I forever make an effort in my love. The day that I stop doing this, my love is lost. Of course, there are those who will simply tell me, then it was never love at all.