What is Love?

By Evan Hsiang

What is love? 
Is it the comforting touch of a mother’s hand, a manifestation of reassurance? 
Or a father’s warm smile, radiating pride and acceptance? 

What about the love an artist has for their art? 
Or an astronomer’s adoration for a quasar’s luminous glow? 
What is love to the artisan who pours their life energy into their craft? 

Is love a symmetrical face, a muscular body, an “old money” aesthetic? 
Or is it acts of service, shared values, shared experiences? 
Is it a match on Tinder or a match on morals? 

Is love mere lust? 
Can it be reduced to base instincts, to Neolithic grunts through the night? 
Can the convergence of two bodies induce the convergence of two souls? 

Can love coexist with loss? 
Can it live on in the absence of its physical vessel, its ties to this mortal plane?
Can the memory of love, so vital, stay afloat amidst torrents of anguish? 

Can love be the unspoken ties we feel to “our people?” 
Can the bonds formed in the face of multifaceted oppression 
shatter the bonds of prejudice, of structural violence? 
Can our love for each other drive our love for this country? 

Is love just a chemical reaction in our brains? 
Can the complexity of human relationships be defined in terms of dopamine or oxytocin?
Are the “butterflies in our stomach” simply molecules of epinephrine in our veins? 

Can love be defined? 
Is it like the Mona Lisa, fixed in its magnificence? 
Or is it an amorphous blob, stochastic and disordered, ever evolving in form but constant in value? 

Can language capture love’s elegant elusivity? 
If love was a star, could our words be our telescope?
Or would magnification tarnish its mysterious charm? 

No servant to our senses, Love greets us
Without pretense or punctuality
And demands nothing but our humanity.