“Love as a ‘Collaborative Work of Art’”
If you know me, it’s always been a dream of mine to give my own TEDTalk. I am an avid fan of TEDTalks. So, let’s discuss one.
Today’s post is inspired by a TEDTalk I watched recently called, “A Better Way to Talk About Love.” Mandy Len Catron—writer and English teacher at the University of British Columbia—breaks down our contemporary metaphors of love to shine light on why and how adjusting our language can easily shift our view of love into a more favorable, desirable concept.
Check out the talk on YouTube, here or attached below:
Let’s chat about love as a “collaborative work of art.”
shot on Olympus Stylus Zoom 80 with Kodak Ultramax film
Personally, it wasn’t until I saw this TEDTalk when I realized that our metaphors of love hold such heavy, negative connotations. Like Catron explains, we often find ourselves saying things like:
I am so lovesick,
My heart aches for you,
I was lovestruck,
We fell in love,
He had me so smitten.
“The history of Western culture is full of language that equates love to mental illness.”
Mandy Len Catron
I truly resonated with her speech.
Love is so complex; there are so many ways to talk about love, there are numerous types of love, and love carries all kinds of indescribable emotions.
I found myself agreeing with a lot of what Catron had to say. With modern day love, we’ve grown so used to associating love with pain. The first example that comes to mind for me is this common saying:
You don’t realize how much you love someone until they are gone.
Not only have we associated love with pain, but we have come to look at pain as a scale of measure for love. Because according to the example above, the pain that this missing entity brings someone “accurately” assesses how much love was/is present. This goes hand-in-hand with Catron’s past experience with a boy she once fell in love with—she shares that maybe she did want to feel a bit crazy when her partner had walked out on her, because then that would “prove” she loved him.
...at 22, I longed to have dramatic experiences and in that moment, I was irrational and furious and devastated...and weirdly enough, I thought that this somehow legitimized the feelings I had for the guy who had just left me.”
Mandy Len Catron
And maybe we find ourselves too focused and stuck on the past when there was rather, a lack of love, that we’ve forgotten to have gratitude for the love that is now present (past romantic relationships vs. present ones). Overall, it’s kind of sad that we’ve created this bleak equation of love, no? The language we’ve created surrounding love generalizes it to be two things: powerful and (sometimes) painful.
“And this is the real madness, because there is no cosmic rule that says that ‘great suffering equals great reward,’ but we talk about love as if this is true.”
Mandy Len Catron
So, how can we change our perspective on love? How can we change the way we talk about love? This is where Catron suggests looking at love as a “collaborative work of art.” Collaborating to a work of art requires patience, effort, communication, compromise—all things that are seen in the investments of love. This metaphor implies that love is something you get to create with your partner, not something that just happens to you. Viewing love in this light further reminds us that our job in any relationship, really, is to communicate what you want to create together. While this is all still easier said than done, Catron reiterates that understanding love in this way tops the alternative of feeling like love is some sort of uncontrollable madness.
I believe understanding love in this way can push us to better steer our relationships towards growth. Instead of measuring love with pain, let this talk stand as a reminder to measure love by what two people have to bring to the table for each other. As I close out this post, I would love to end it with one last quote from Catron’s TEDTalk.
“The beautiful thing about the collaborative work of art is that it will not paint, or draw, or sculpt itself…this version of love allows us to decide what it looks like.”
Mandy Len Catron
Thanks for tuning into this post!
I figured maybe someone out there would enjoy watching or discussing this TEDTalk as well. Maybe you got something out of this post, maybe you didn’t—but thanks for taking a look anyway.
