Hi Mirror, it’s Noelle.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been made increasingly aware that people actually read my editor’s notes (thank you), so I’m cautious to get too personal in the theme of this week’s issue. But generally, the older I get, the more I think it’s pointless to try to define love.
The reason we talk about love is because it’s a little elusive — not only in the sense that people fall in and out of relationships all the time — but each time a person loves, that feeling is distinct, personal and only really has to be true to themselves and the person that they share love with. While we try to generalize about love, we can’t. Every week I read some headline in the New Yorker about modern dating, at least one line prompts an eye roll. Though I love the New Yorker, I don’t feel that a single columnist can truly speak to the accumulation of experiences that have informed the romantic landscape of every person out there.
We ask our friends for advice about love, we argue about what love is supposed to look like, feel like. But the most I can say definitively about love is that you enter a relationship as one version of yourself. As you love someone else, and love affects you, it changes who you are. I think the willingness to let the people you love inform your way of being, in little or huge ways, is pretty cool. We’re all just patchwork quilts, made of families, friends, partners, etc. How cute is that?
All that being said, Valentine’s Day is not really about love anymore. Or at least, it’s not in the way that it’s sold to us. While it’s rewarding to celebrate the love you have with someone, I think we’ve come to a kind of cultural agreement that Valentine’s shouldn’t be the day that makes or breaks your perception — or others’ perceptions — as to whether or not you and your person love one another. It’s best to have fun with the holiday, and maybe not succumb to yet another consumerist trap.
What I will say, personally, is that I love love. It’s amazingly tangible in some moments and insufferably annoying in others, when things don’t work out. While I think it’s best at this phase of my life to take pressure off all the expectations of what love should be, that doesn’t mean I think you should approach it without clarity. Bring back earnestness, whatever that means to you.
This week in Mirror, our writers explore all the ways that love manifests on campus. One writer sits down with a professor to discuss love in the context of academic analysis. Another writer explores love outside of romance, focusing on acts of kindness on campus. Two writers return for an especially topical edition of their relationship advice column, Freak of the Week, weighing in on getting a Valentine’s gift for someone you’re not quite dating.
Happy Week 6, Mirror! Though our column comes a few days before the official holiday, I hope you take this week to remember those you love. They’ve probably shaped you in more ways you can name, and you should thank them for it. Or fight them for it, if things didn’t go well.
