would you love me if i was a worm?

May 12, 2024

a few months ago, i was playing this rankthings game with a friend. it works by pitting “would you rather” options against one another. you can have x, but only if you give up y. it ranks all your choices from top to bottom. everyone i’ve played this with ranks “ability to love” and “be loved” as their top two options, but there’s always a bit of agonizing as to which one comes on top.

is it better to be loved or to able to love?

i recently read lori gottlieb’s marry him (don’t judge, i loved maybe you should talk to someone), in which she discusses the prince charming narrative. when you’re a kid, you can’t help but dream - and expect. i was never more romantic than when i was about six years old, watching prince eric fight the sea for ariel, convinced that soul mates were real. dreamy, no?

the disneyification is only one aspect (and it is changing). love just has big shoes to fill! marriage used to be a way to gain financial stability; now it’s mandatory for a partner to help you self-actualize. if they fall short in any way, there’s an $8B dating app industry promising tomorrow’s better and best.1

my parents recently taught me the difference between “hope” (希望, xī wàng) and “expectation” (期望, qī wàng) in mandarin. they’re only one consonant apart.

call it dreaming, call it expectation, call it qī wàng.

as much as we expect, though, i think we still know. we know that we are practical. “i love you because of your brain” is supposed to be more romantic than because of glass skin and big eyes. and what happens, then, when my brain goes with age? why is the best predictor of social relationships geographic proximity?2

would you love me if i was a worm? it’s only a joke because we all know the answer.

but that’s okay! that’s completely expected. acknowledging the practical limitations doesn’t make love any less real. this, actually, is where love shines. the height of love is accepting the pragmatism while overcoming it.

it’s alright that the long-distance friendship faded or that the right person came at the wrong time. who can deny that we are all victims of circumstance? “if our paths never crossed, we could be completely different people by now.”

and, it’s alright that every so often, love is purely irrational. i once tried to explain to someone why i was in a long-distance relationship with no projected end date, and they stared at me as though i’d submitted an intent form to an asylum. i stand by it. shah jahan builds the taj mahal as his wife’s tomb, and my friend stopped talking to other girls even though the situationship wasn’t exclusive. delusion isn’t automatically bad — sometimes it’s just romantic!

everyone is human and makes human decisions, and we can still aspire for more in ourselves. the former says that it is not guaranteed to be loved. the second calls to our ability to love anyway.

my buddhism teacher3 taught the idea of two separate loves. the first is the businessman’s love. it is based off of appearance or affection or the very reasonable intellectual compatibility. but it is transactional, conditional. it fades when skin grows wrinkled or bids go unacknowledged in silence or “this is too hard” and “it’s just not worth it anymore.”

the second is unconditional love. it is love in the face of rejection, without reciprocity as an asterisk. it is a mother’s love even when her son screams, “i hate you!” in the middle of the grocery store. it is the love for a friend who has abandoned you for her latest girlfriend. a friend of mine was in an unrequited situationship for a couple of months past the expiration date. i was quick to rail against the object of their affections, bid that they deserved better. they looked at me with only tenderness and said, “it wasn’t her fault.” i love this friend. they will find love everywhere they go.

the point of unconditional love isn’t really to benefit others — it’s to give yourself a gift. you’re giving yourself the ability to love freely.

you’re giving yourself the ability to love freely.

i like to think of them as two ends of a spectrum. we all start from the businessman’s love. we may never reach the unconditional end, but we could stretch closer.

expecting less applies to both reciprocity and forgiveness. letting go of the annoyance from the ambivalent mutual who never responds or the hollowness of an empty apology. a friend complained about some guy who showed up to his house party after leaving an invite on read and hands empty. was he right? does it matter? the sandbags bury our backs until we drop them.

and, the less expectation we have, the more we’re willing to give, and the more beautiful our interactions become. texting a new stranger from that house party last weekend and actually inviting them to lunch. picking up a postcard for the friend who lives next door. sending flowers on your boyfriend’s birthday, even if you’re fighting. it doesn’t matter if you break up after the carnations arrived. you wanted him to have them anyway. in tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, sam calls out to sadie even though she broke his trust. he calls again when she ignores him. he shows up at her house to check on her even though it takes an hour’s commute. it is hard to persist in loving someone in deaf ears. sometimes, it is very brave.

the difficult part, of course, is actually doing any of this. it’s easy to feel that you deserved better, whether it’s the sting of an invitation that never came or the chill of seeing your friend and some ex together. forgiveness is the ultimate form of love, which is why it is the most difficult. the meditation teacher who taught me the different types of love also told me the story of a friend who insulted him decades ago. he remembered the words right down to his friend’s funeral. forgiving or giving out of obligation — not genuineness — feels like scooping your heart out of your ribcage as a housewarming present.

loving beyond expectation is hard. sometimes, we can’t embrace the slap. we can only turn the other cheek.

“if someone beats you with a stick, you don’t get angry with the stick — you get angry with the person. these people we are talking about are like sticks in the hands of ignorance and hatred". - matthieu ricard

it’s possible to step out of the stick’s swing while knowing it’s not the stick’s fault.

sometimes, by keeping the distance, by looking away, the love can be preserved, frozen in amber until it’s possible to find warmth again, even only in imagination. to those who i once looked at with stars in my eyes: i will try to forgive you. i will give to the best that i can. and if i cannot give any more, then i will release my qī wàng, save my xī wàng for another time. know i love you still — only from afar, only out of necessity.

anyway. expectations low and heart open, i am trying to grow my ability to love! always, always, easier said than done. feeling lucky for friends who text me like a long-distance lover, parents who never let me make dinner, and the words around me that seed optimism into my writing. advice rolls off the tongue when it’s easy to apply. a burst of texts in the middle of a tuesday afternoon, an essay link with “i thought you would like”, a soft-cover book mailed to my house. if this is life, all these lovely, tiny gestures, then this is love.

happy spring :)

Directionally

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