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Anyone know that feeling in their chest that comes and goes but always comes whenever they see the person they are attracted to? That feeling of enamoration and the flutters in your chest? By now, you’re probably judging this feeling to be love. Sorry to break it to you, it’s not. Despite the very widespread belief that love is an emotion, it actually is not at all. It’s been deemed something that comes and goes with time depending on the person it’s being given to and the situation in which one may encounter it. However, examples of the true nature of love are depicted in many areas of fiction, non-fiction, and science. An example of fiction literature that promotes this idea is James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk. Throughout this novel, love is described as an action rather than an emotion, and one that is at the forefront of what allows people to overcome the difficulties and struggles they may face in their life daily.
Love is a motivator that strengthens a person to be able to live. Without the desire to love or to be loved, there are no ties that bind a person’s soul to this world and they will be ineffective in living. Consider Robert M Mack, diagnosed with cancer in 1979, having a small adenocarcinoma in his lung, who was told he had no more than five years left to live. Upon further investigation, he describes that the cancer was progressive, and the doctors then said that the possibility of him living beyond 2 years was nearly impossible. However, 2 years later he’s still alive and according to the author, Mack (1985), he states, “This whole experience of disease and survival has certainly strengthened my belief in…an almighty power beyond my own. …the role that I believe faith, hope, and communication with some universal power have in my survival and the strength I have received from the faith and prayers of those who support me have convinced me that there is an Almighty Power,… indubitably aiding me in my struggle” (p. 563) He claimed that the love a Higher Power had for him was enough to cure his cancer and allow him to continue living despite absolutely everything the doctors told him about his life expectancy. Love most certainly is capable of dragging people from the pits of despair into pastures of peace.
Love provides people with purpose to achieve in life. When everything comes crashing down around people and they don’t understand what to do in their life, one of the best ways a person can continue to live effectively is having purpose. Whether a person loves what they do or loves a person will be the driving factor that determines their perseverance to that thing or person they love. Enamoration is distinct from love in that enamoration will cause someone to treat others with a pseudo-love because they feel good, whereas love will allow a person to treat others with authentic love despite the feeling they may receive from that person. Love influences emotion but true love doesn’t waver because of emotion. Taking a look into the lives of Fonny and Tish, two main characters of James Baldwin’s book, If Beale Street Could Talk, Fonny and Tish are currently struggling in the maintenance of their relationship considering Fonny’s in prison and his girlfriend, Tish, recently declared pregnant with his child, is finding out ways in which she can get him out. When Fonny lashes out at her due to being stressed in prison, he asks if she still loves him. Tish says, “I’ll always love you, Fonny” (Baldwin, 1974, p. 111). Despite not liking Fonny’s actions, Tish still loved him in the midst of their circumstance: the difference between love and enamoration.
On the contrary, critics argue that love is an emotion, because it feels pleasing to the person who undergoes it. This is understandable because love and dopamine responses in the brain are highly linked to one another, however the Bible states in John 15:13, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John, p. 1475). Giving one’s life is not pleasing to a person, but love will motivate that person to do it. That is love: action over emotion.
Over the course of time the understanding of love has morphed into one where it has to be pleasing to the one giving love which just isn’t true. Love is absent of feel-good emotion. It provides for others and doesn’t seek to be provided for. Emotions come and go, but true love is static despite the situation.
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