| When asked to define the nature of love, people tend to reach in many directions for insight, from anecdotal reflection on their personal lives to the larger familial and cultural values they have assimilated. One arrives at a conception of love through analysis and synthesis of his or her own experiences with the ideals that have been gleaned from external sources. This process is both conscious and unconscious in that it is an amalgamation of deliberate acts of reflection and unwitting adoption of values through environmental immersion and observation of what has been modeled by parents and others.Perhaps the most immediately accessible source is popular media. Compelling conceptions can be found in music, film, books, etc., and may be overt or subliminal. At times love, as presented, is utterly self-gratifying, ephemeral, and stems from physical or sexually desires. In other cases, love is depicted as heroic and self-sacrificial, assuming a mythic quality more at home within the fables of knights and dragons then in our modern reality where everyone has deep psychological issues stemming from childhood. Without question, the presentation of love within popular media is diverse and of varying degrees of authority. I suppose the difficulty is found in deciphering these heterogeneous values and arriving at a healthy and fulfilling conception.The most profound source is the familial context. One’s notion of love is heavily informed by how it was experienced as a child. The pivotal role of parents in the early developmental years probably cannot be overstated. The fortunate ones emerge into a loving and welcoming (though, no doubt imperfect) home in which love and nurturing are positively modeled. However, as many know first-hand, the home isn’t always a place for positive development. Familial situations involving abuse and neglect often distort one’s perception of love and, if not addressed appropriately, tend to inhibit one’s ability to give love wholly, as |
