What I mean by Love

People sometimes ask me what I actually mean when I talk about love. The answer has become surprisingly simple over the years: I think love is connection.

Not just between two people: between lovers, between parents and children, between friends, between strangers. Also between us and nature. Maybe even between every living thing. I see it as an invisible web connecting all living beings.

What comes next? I don’t believe love is something you can earn. If someone can only love you after you’ve become more successful, more attractive, more powerful, richer, or simply more convenient, then whatever you’re trying to earn probably isn’t love at all.

Love also doesn’t exist without freedom. Not political freedom. Not financial freedom. Something quieter than that. The freedom to remain yourself. Because the moment you abandon yourself in order to keep love, you’ve already started losing both.

Love doesn’t ask you to become someone else. It doesn’t ask you to give up your personality, your curiosity, your passions, or your voice. If it does, it isn’t making you more alive. It’s making you smaller.

People sometimes imagine freedom as the absence of attachment. I don’t. To me, freedom means remaining loyal to yourself while choosing to stay connected to someone else. Those two things aren’t opposites. They make each other possible.

That’s why I believe mature love can only exist between two people who are free inside. Not because they don’t need each other. But because neither of them is trying to own the other.

Love isn’t dependency. It’s connection.

Maybe that’s all I’ve been trying to say.