A Disciplined Answer to the Question, "What is it that people give each other?"

Sociology: Consumerism and Advertising

Like the advent of a razor with five blades (or even the introduction of the single-blade razor for cosmetic hair-removal), we incite the other to question her wants and needs.  We aggravate and agitate.  We push, we pull.  We pitch contrast and cast lines of light into each other’s mysteries. We offer the sparkling promise of potential.  We are the one you didn’t know you wanted.  We are the thing you hardly dared dream.  We are the solution to a problem you didn’t know you had, but we are also problematic, and there will be a price.  You will be uncomfortable with the questions and doubts this union inspires.  But in the end, you will know the difference between a lemon and a real bargain, and you will know better where you begin and end.

Spirituality and Religion: Shamanism, Christianity, Buddhism

The shaman warns you to never give your heart, but the light that shines from it.

Christians often focus on the body’s needs: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” ~Matthew 25:35

Buddhists generally want something for the other person, not from him.

Literature: The Gift of the Magi

She cuts and sells her braid to buy him a chain for his pocket watch.  He pawns his watch for barrettes for her hair.  Time no longer resides in his palm, and no longer does she measure her life in brush strokes.  Now they keep time together.

Philosophy: Emergence, and the Realm of Pure Forms

Aristotle attested, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”  Together, we are more than should be possible.  With a kiss, we squeeze water from stones, with a smile, we turn water to wine, with a brief exchange, we bend time and space.  We give each other the opportunity to transcend ourselves.

Plato espoused a realm beyond the physical where souls, freed of the flesh, contemplate concepts before reincarnating.  Back in the body, souls dimly remember that perfect place and long for it.  It is this yearning and the recognition of the ideal in the beauty of the beloved that inspires falling in love.

Physics: Gravity

We give each other something attractive to fall towards.

Music: Melissa Etheridge

In one of her most famous songs, she pleads with her lover, “Come to my window/ crawl inside, wait by the light/ of the moon/ Come to my window/ I’ll be home soon.”  The song is a metaphor.  The window.  The light.  Etheridge didn’t sing, “I’ll be there soon.”  Her lover gave her a home.

Math: Infinity

It is in the striving to halve the infinite distance between us that we discover how vast we are.

History: Anne Frank

“I love you, with a love so great that it simply couldn’t keep growing inside my heart, but had to leap out and reveal itself in all its magnitude.”

Art: The Kiss

Two lovers caught in the midst of their first, adulterous kiss, give their hands to hip and nape, give their lips and breasts and fates.

Psychology: Harry Harlow’s Monkey Love Experiments

Given the option, a baby monkey will choose a soft, warm replica of its mother, sans food, over a hard, steely version offering milk.  And with a supportive figure in the room, an infant monkey will feel safe enough to explore the unfamiliar space beyond itself.

Anthropology: Mythology

“Where the myth fails, human love begins.  Then we love a human being, not our dream, but a human being with flaws,” writes Anais Nin.  We often seek in the other what only something greater than ourselves can provide.  This is as foolish as Icarus willing his wings not to melt in the sun’s furious gaze.  It is only when we realize and accept our limits that we can forgive ourselves for being human and then transcend our fictions.  And when we can be this honest with ourselves, we have something very valuable to offer others, something of which we can never be deprived.

“One cannot save people.  You can only love them,” Anais Nin attests.  It may be true of ourselves, too.  One cannot save herself from being human and imperfect, but she can love herself, and if she can love herself despite all of the ways in which she is impoverished, she can provide for others, having only love to give.