Love. It may very well be the only reason that people do anything at all! In an attempt to be loved, and for the sake of loving others, people twist themselves and their lives into all sorts of shapes. That the question ‘What Is Love?’ has never failed to receive answers — though those answers have been varied — isn’t all that surprising. From the grandiose poetry of Shakespeare to good morning texts, love has never gone without a language to speak in, nor people to be spoken by. 

So, in what language is love spoken here at the ANU? In the language of ANUCrushes of course! And if we want to understand what it means to love, and how to become better lovers in the future, I believe we need to look both to the past and the present.

The ancient Greeks (in all their wisdom) didn’t just have one word for love, they had eight. For example, there was Agape for selfless, universal love; Storge for familial love; and above all, Eros, for romantic, passionate love.

And yet, despite all their fancy words, even the Greeks failed to capture love’s essence.

Plato, for example, ever the contrarian, decided that love couldn’t possibly be beautiful. According to Plato, love is forever out of reach, forever elusive and an eternal search for something we will never really have no matter how much we want it. #ANUCrushes32721 captures Plato’s love here: “Sometimes I wish I’d never met her ’cause of how much I hurt when she pushes me away, but then she pulls me back in, and I just want it not to end.”  

And so, whether he wished it or not, Plato may have been the first in a long line of those who proclaimed love too risky, too unpredictable, and far too messy to be worth the trouble that accompanied it. Frowning upon romantic poetry, sidelining human emotion, taking the romance out of life and replacing it with ‘reason’, Plato unknowingly invented the very ‘reason’ that philosophers have had such a hard time getting lucky.

But, to be fair to our friends with comically large brains, love isn’t all sunshine and roses. As #ANUCrushes32525 laments, “Why must grief be the price of love? … Is the hurt and pain that follows love ever worth it? … Why must you tear apart my heart, my being?” Maybe love really is far too painful, to the point where the means simply cannot justify the ends. Maybe it really would be wiser to focus on other things, like, you know, the divine, or numbers, or your GPA or something?

Those of us struck by Cupid’s arrow know otherwise. Enter the untimely rebels — those daring souls who argued that love, no matter how messy, how chaotic, how dangerous, was ultimately still something worth fighting for. They were the champions of love, who defended Eros to their dying breath.

Take, for instance, Spinoza. While his definition of love in his masterpiece, The Ethics, is as dry as Lake Eyre — “pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause,” — above all he was concerned with self-determined love. Passionate love, grounded in mutual respect and personal freedom and in all honesty, the type of love that we all look for in our own lives. Which is what #ANUCrushes32538 captures so well when they write: “I know they are the one, and I think they do too. … She is so cute, I enjoy who I am when I am around her. I feel… complete!”

And then there is Sappho, who wrote of love’s intensity, its emotional depth and its power to overwhelm and embolden the human spirit. To Sappho, love is not merely affectionate and tender, but profound and elemental, capable of shaking the very foundation of the world. Love has often incarnated wills of resistance and revolution for no sake but its own, leading people like #ANUCrushes32683’s writer to pledge to “change the world to be with you and make you happy again.”

And let’s not forget Nietzsche, who, in The Gay Science, argued that true love demands our full attention and puts us in such a position where “the whole rest of the world appears indifferent, pale, and worthless.” For Nietzsche, doing anything less than loving would render life itself meaningless. Perhaps such an outlook is reflected most concretely in #ANUCrushes32549: “I’ve been thinking for weeks and I figured that I’d rather live the best present moment with you by my side than doing nothing and staying in the void.”

So, where does our little excursion through history bring us? Right back to the start.

Whether drinking with Socrates or glancing at someone across Uni Ave, love remains as perplexing as ever. It can feel beautiful, fulfilling and forever, and yet fall to pieces all the same. The heart can burn so hot it turns to ash, it can beat so hard it shatters, it can stop altogether, but even still, people never stop falling in love.

Here at ANU, love takes more than one form: be it a casual hookup, an unrequited crush, or a sweet gesture from a significant other. At this university, and perhaps on this Earth, there is no one way to love someone correctly, nor a proper way to be loved. Love doesn’t have to be forever, nor does it have to be never — though I do believe that it has to be kind.

Ultimately, I think Socrates put it best when he said:

“Human nature can find no better helper than love.”