Consuming People

I don’t understand what other people call “love.”

I love animals, for instance. And so I want to take care of them, and I enjoy deeply observing them. In my yard there are squirrels, rabbits, and about five kinds of birds who visit daily (opposums and raccoons have also been spotted but I have been unable to cultivate their presence). I make food for them or find things to give them, and I throw stuff out the window for them almost every day. I like imagining they feel excited about finding treats or something new they’ve never had before, or simply that they were hungry before and now they won’t be. I like to watch them discover it, make decisions about what to take or where to bring it. I wish they wouldn’t fight with each other about it, as they sometimes do, but I understand where they’re coming from and I know no one is going to get hurt. I like learning how they do things. For instance, if you give a squirrel something round to eat, like a cookie, they will eat it in the round, turning it like a wheel. When they cover up something they’ve buried, they pat the ground over it several times to pack the dirt down, just like people do. I like learning their habits, preferences and daily rhythms, how they’re different from people, and how they’re the same. I will stand stock still for a very long time just watching them do their thing. I would like to pet them or hold them, but I know I can’t so I just accept that they have natural fears and I have to respect that. It’s important to just let them be. I like knowing I am helping make their lives a little easier or more enjoyable, and that what I do contributes to them having and taking care of their little families. I can see they appreciate what I’ve given them, even though they haven’t a clue about where this good fortune came from. They give me a great deal of satisfaction, pleasure and even a little bit of a sense of purpose or usefulness. When I love a person, I pretty much do the same things for the same reasons and want to get the same things out of the relationship as I get from watching and taking care of the animals in the yard.

I hear people say they love music, and people who really love music seem to want to acquire as much of it as possible. They brag about how much of it they have, or how much their collection might be worth, or how much money or time they’ve invested in building their collections or in having the latest equipment or technologies for listening to it or carrying it around in their pocket. They’re especially proud if they find or own something rare, or expensive, or most trendy or whatever. They tell everyone else about what they like, they want to share it with others, and they think their tastes and media somehow reflect on who they are: you’re cool or classy or a tough guy or deep or rebellious or posi or whatever depending on what you listen to or how you listen to it. People even put great stock in choosing friends and even romantic partners based on their loving the same music. But what do all of these behaviours and attitudes surrounding music mean to people? Most are unable to say. Some people feel “connected” to whoever created the music, I suppose, but this is projection and it isn’t real. Some people are moved by something they listen to, but moved to do what? I don’t deny music is powerful, influential, can create community, political and cultural change, and even save individual lives. It also just feels good to hear something you like. I get that. There is something very critical to our existence that needs music. But for the most part, for most people in technologically advanced societies, one’s love of music is highly focused on the self, is often used to separate oneself from others– literally, as when people are plugged in and tuned out; or more generally, as when people are typed and divided by what they listen to or how– and music itself is obsessively consumed, it seems almost frantically. I love some albums I have, so much that I don’t understand: why do I need more music to love? Am I really missing out on something better if I am not in a constant search for more music? Is my experience of these albums I love really so much less than it could be if I updated how I listen to them? When is good enough good enough? When are people satisfied, when do they decide they have enough to love, or that their love of something doesn’t have to be in a constant struggle to be experienced at a higher-level, which itself is always in a state of limitless ascension– or is never being satisfied the goal? That doesn’t sound like love to me. That just sounds really hectic.

Another thing people seem to really love are their cars: some people love cars in general, or perhaps some particular category of cars– a certain manufacturer, or a certain style (sports, utility, vintage, etc)– or maybe they only love a particular model of a certain year of a certain colour. Sometimes they love the object itself, or else everything they think it brings to their life: freedom, convenience, prestige, “chicks”, or whatever; or both. When someone gets it in their mind that they want some certain car, they daydream about owning it. People break their fucking backs to possess, maintain, and use these things. From what I’ve observed, people are pretty excited if they can get something they want, but it only lasts until they see something newer, or more efficient, or more attractive, or whatever is their criteria in choosing a car. People feel much the same about other people, I think. I’ve heard many heterosexual men assert that “they love women” or I’ve seen them include “women” as a general thing in their loves or interests in their profiles on social-networking sites. Some people are more categorical: they love musicians, or Asians, brunettes, or other “types”: spontaneous types, romantic types, athletic types, outdoorsy types. And we all probably know or have had personal experience with more than one person who only loves a particular model of a certain year of a certain colour: must be between the ages of 23-25, Asian, petite, long hair, no kids, non-smoker, social drinker, fun, spontaneous, athletic, etc etc etc.; and for a certain purpose: for fun, for friendship possibly more, for intimate encounters, for dinners out and movies in, for marriage. Even if this isn’t written out in a personal ad online or in the back of a newspaper, I do know from observation and experience there are many people who at least vaguely have such descriptions of what they want and are looking for in their minds. When someone gets it in their mind they want a certain person, they daydream about them; if they manage to get together with someone who more or less satisfies what they were looking for and/or who brings to their life whatever it is they want, they seem pretty excited– at least for a time, maybe just until they see something newer, or more attractive, or with better fuel efficiency and a 5-disc cd player.

What worries me the most, though, is that people say, “I love you” and they do not mean love like I love animals: I want to take care of them, I enjoy deeply observing them, learning about them, I respect them and want to contribute to their well-being, share in their happiness, and out of all this feel pleasure and satisfaction, appreciation, and a sense of purpose or usefulness and connection to their existence. No, it seems to me from observation of others, hearing of others’ experiences and from experiences of my own, a lot of people love other people like a lot of people love music and cars. They like someone who reflects highly or positively on themselves; they try to build a collection of people worth bragging to others about, to have as many experiences as possible with as many people as possible; they are often dissatisfied, or only satisfied for a limited period of time, because there is more out there, and it could be better, and they shouldn’t limit themselves to what could possibly be a “lesser experience” than one they could be having if they keep searching and upgrading; and if by chance they find that rare track or the best car in their price range to suit the most of their needs, and they are IN LOVE!– they treat that person like an object, breaking their fucking backs to maintain ownership of them. From one end of the spectrum– developing possession by means of cultivating in the other emotional fears or insecurities or increasing financial dependency– to the other– taking a person’s soul by sexual assault or murder– all along this spectrum will be people who are doing these things to someone they say they “love.”

I don’t understand it. I have seen this with my own eyes, I have heard it with my own ears, I have felt it on my own body, and I don’t understand how anyone who feels within themselves the need to acquire, control, or own someone else like a thing to consume or use in whatever way and for however long they desire can identify that sensation within themselves as “love.” For a very long time, I gave a lot of things, tangible and intangible, to someone who did not love me; what he didn’t want he casually threw out; what I would not give, he stole. I love you, I love you, I love you, he insisted to the very last day. Maybe, but in quality like he loves and wants to own a certain car or a lot of music, and in degree far less.

Since no one has ever shown me or treated me with romantic love, I can only imagine what it must feel like to be actually loved. I imagine it’s nice. It has always been what I’ve most wanted to experience my whole life. I’m sure that is true for most everybody. But that just leads to another thing I don’t understand: if everyone just wants to be loved, why is love so hard for people to give? Do people want to be loved so much that they are blinded with greed, is it something they can only consume but not produce? Or is the love they want to receive so shabbily defined: to love another means to them to acquire, possess or control or want to keep someone, so they want in turn to be themselves acquired, possessed, controlled or kept? I would find this hard to believe, and very sad, of course, but I am really wondering if that is what is going on, if people’s idea of what love looks or feels like is really so low that they are actually giving out everything they would call “love”. If that is the case, then maybe I am the greedy one. I want to not be amassed within a collection, I want to not be owned and controlled like an object, I want to not feel consumed like a product; I want to just feel like I hope the animals in my yard feel: un-self-conscious, a little safer and secure in my environment, free to just be. To feel born with everything I’m supposed to have to live and be accepted– needing no more, no less– to play, to eat, to sleep, and even to fight, if that happens, without mortal fear. To do all these normal things without punishment or fear of physical ruin and emotional apocalypse. I guess what I imagine love feels like has become pretty small, but I guess I have small desires and needs in every other way too. I don’t want 937 hours of music in my pocket, I won’t get tired of my few records I really love. I don’t need grand romance and a lot of show, I just want to feel safe and liked. At the end of my last relationship, when he would say he loves me– usually because he was showing me the exact opposite of love– I said something perhaps kind of odd but very true: “I want to love you.” And I really did. It hurt a lot that I couldn’t (I couldn’t because my love for him would get used as a weapon against me or I would get punished for it). It seems like people just don’t know that producing/creating/giving love is just as rewarding, maybe more so, than taking/receiving/consuming it. I feel sorry for people sometimes, when I think about things like this. I don’t want to sound arrogant by saying that. But I do feel bad for people who are caught up in the acquisition of stuff, especially when “love” is one of those things, who spend their lives fretting over the control and maintenance of their “possessions.”

It isn’t new for me to not understand what other people call “love.” I tried really hard this time to understand and accept how others apparently experience and express it, I believed him and those who advised me to put up with his chronic mistreatment when they said I was unrealistic to think things should be any other way; but no number of hours, months, years of scoldings, punishments, deprivations, or other threats or enactments of violence could change my mind about this: love is giving, observant, nurturing and comforting; it is not taking, possessing, controlling or consuming. I write this down in the hope that I never forget or compromise this belief ever again.

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