Often when I leave comments on a blog posts that moved me, I write “I love this post” or “I love the way you do [this]” or “I love that quotation.” Lately I’ve been wondering if I’m overusing the word “love”.
Am I really feeling this strong emotional attachment, or am I just being lazy, unwilling to take the time to precisely articulate what strikes me about a particular piece?
After reading a recent article in The Atlantic on the science behind love, I’m inclined to believe that, more often than not, I use the word “love” because that’s what I’m actually feeling– a “micro-moment of positivity resonance.” That’s how Barbara Fredrickson defines love in her new book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do.
In The Atlantic article “There’s No Such Thing as Everlasting Love (According to Science), author Emily Esfahani Smith writes:
Fredrickson, a leading researcher of positive emotions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presents scientific evidence to argue that love is not what we think it is. It is not a long-lasting, continually present emotion that sustains a marriage; it is not the yearning and passion that characterizes young love; and it is not the blood-tie of kinship.
Rather, it is what she calls a “micro-moment of positivity resonance.” She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in “It’s a Wonderful World” when he sang, “I see friends shaking hands, sayin ‘how do you do?’ / They’re really sayin’, ‘I love you.”
So when I say I “love” Louis Armstrong’s song, now I know why—because I feel such a strong positive connection to what he’s saying, as well as with how he says it, and the music he says it with, that I experience a triple love-whammy!
What I feel when reading things by fellow bloggers, or see the images they’ve created, is similar—a deeply-felt resonating connection, often on several levels.
Smith writes:
When you experience love, your brain mirrors the person’s you are connecting with in a special way,” and then she goes on to explain how “[t]he mutual understanding and shared emotions” between a story-teller and a listener “generated a micro-moment of love, which ‘is a single act, performed by two brains,’ as Fredrickson writes in her book.
This can happen between a writer and reader as well, or between an artist and viewer. In his book “Tao and Creativity” Chang Chung-yuan describes this connection between poet and reader as a “spiritual rhythm.” It is the means by which the reader participates in the inner experience of the poet. He writes:
In other words, the reader is carried into the rhythmic flux and is brought to the depth of original indeterminacy from which the poetic pattern emerges. The reader is directly confronted with the objective reality which the poet originally faced. The subjectivity of the reader and the objective reality of the poem interfuse . . . .
This is very interesting because Fredrickson discovers a similar phenomenon when she compares the brainwaves of a storyteller and listeners. Smith describes this in her article:
What they found was remarkable. In some cases, the brain patterns of the listener mirrored those of the storyteller after a short time gap. The listener needed time to process the story after all. In other cases, the brain activity was almost perfectly synchronized; there was no time lag at all between the speaker and the listener. But in some rare cases, if the listener was particularly tuned in to the story—if he was hanging on to every word of the story and really got it—his brain activity actually anticipated the story-teller’s in some cortical areas.
The mutual understanding and shared emotions, especially in that third category of listener, generated a micro-moment of love, which ‘is a single act, performed by two brains,’ as Fredrickson writes in her book.
Fredrickson also discovered that the capacity to experience these daily love connections in our lives can be increased through simple loving-kindness meditations, where, as Smith describes, “you sit in silence for a period of time and cultivate feelings of tenderness, warmth, and compassion for another person by repeating a series of phrases to yourself wishing them love, peace, strength, and general well-being.”
“Fredrickson likes to call love a nutrient,” Smith writes. “If you are getting enough of the nutrient, then the health benefits of love can dramatically alter your biochemistry in ways that perpetuate more micro-moments of love in your life, and which ultimately contribute to your health, well-being, and longevity.”
So remember, fellow readers, as you go meandering from one blog site to another like busy little bees, making those “micro-moment” connections with people whose work you admire, that you are engaged in a kind of virtual love-making. You are distributing a pollen-like “nutrient” that nurtures others, as well as yourself.
As Louis says, “what a wonderful world” we live in!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5TwT69i1lU
Related articles
- There’s No Such Thing as Everlasting Love (According to Science) – The Atlantic (smritidisaac.wordpress.com)
- There’s No Such Thing as Everlasting Love (According to Science) (psychologicalscience.org)
Carol Welsh said:
Yep…I LOVE your writing. 🙂
deborahbrasket said:
I’m glad because I love your blog too!
Carol Welsh said:
🙂
Claire 'Word by Word' said:
They should create a love button as well as a like button, there’s little enough of it spread around, I don’t think you are overusing it at all and glad that you have come to the same conclusion. When it moves something inside its the perfect expression to share.
deborahbrasket said:
I like that–a “love” button!
David J. Bauman said:
I love that comment!
Jeremy Nathan Marks said:
This is a terrific post, Deborah. I would like to share it over at my blog.
deborahbrasket said:
Thank you so much for sharing this! I’m honored.
Jeremy Nathan Marks said:
Reblogged this on The Sand County and commented:
Deborah has written a lovely and thought-provoking post which I can strongly relate to. I wanted to share it with all of you.
Paul Handover said:
Which is how I came to it – a beautiful post that fills me with joy. Without doubt it is the connections that we ‘bloggers’ make that fills me with hope. The hope that this core of humanity will light beacons across the world.
As with Jeremy I would love to republish this on Learning from Dogs.
Oh, and I genuinely loved what you wrote! 🙂
deborahbrasket said:
I would be honored for you to share this with others. So glad you stopped by. See the connections we’re making already? A little virtual love-making 😉
Paul Handover said:
Thank you.
Jeremy Nathan Marks said:
I like your choices. I am tempted to create one of my own.
Wings of Desire immediately stood out for me. I think that movie has left an indelible impression upon me. I remember when I first watched it that it was going to stay with me. . . .
deborahbrasket said:
You should create your own list of movies! It was a lot of fun. Yes, Wings of Desire was remarkable. I have it in my library, I loved it so much.
Jeremy Nathan Marks said:
Whoops! Sorry, I meant to post this comment on your movie post! LOL! Oh well, you get two comments here for the price of one. 🙂
deborahbrasket said:
LOL. Just glad you thought enough about the post it to leave a note–whereever it ended up.
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David J. Bauman said:
Well thank you, Deborah for taking the time to visit my blog and spread the love. This post really resonated with me. It’s just the sort of thing I have been thinking about lately, and I am delighted that some scientists took some time to investigate this. I really do love this post.
deborahbrasket said:
Happy to spread the love. Just finished lisening to Highwayman song on your blog–so lovely. Wonderful way to end the evening.
David J. Bauman said:
Honored to share a part of your night. . . um, yeah, back to that virtual love making thing. . .
gabrielablandy said:
Hi Deborah! I have a deeply-felt resonating connection on several levels with this post. Or, in other words – I love it!!
deborahbrasket said:
So happy to hear!
gabrielablandy said:
I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve put a link here on my post this week 😉
deborahbrasket said:
I am honored to be linked to your blog, always!
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Kelly Hand said:
This is a lovely post–and so insightful. It captures the feeling I get when I look at my cats and adore them, then forget about them after they wander away. And although I would say my love for my husband and kids is more enduring than that, much of the time I am not focused on them. Instead, we have micro-moments of love. In fact, now I’ll go up and read to my daughter at bedtime, and that is often when I feel the greatest love for her–probably because it combines my love for reading with my love for her. MG fiction is exactly the right range for my kids, so I’m eager to learn more about your writing. So glad to have found this via your SheWrites profile.
deborahbrasket said:
I am so glad you wrote. I love your examples of those micro-moments of love. I have the same kind. So nice to connect through SheWrites. I’m still working on that MG series–hope I’ll have something to share soon.
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Chakras said:
I am sure this article has touched all the internet viewers, its really
really good post on building up new blog.
deborahbrasket said:
Thank you.
hrobertson2013 said:
Deborah, thank you. Wow. Death personified. Powerful imagery. I am taken to a time when my own mother passed. Difficult to relive, but stronger and more empathetic because of it. Are you familiar with Rhonda Byrne’s The Power? If not…find it. The CD is best for me. Better than even sweet, ripe plumbs. Really. What the world needs now is LOVE. The POWER comes in the giving of such without expecting anything in return.
deborahbrasket said:
I think this is in response to my story “13 Ways of Looking at Death.” I’m so glad you liked it. I hadn’t heard of Byrne’s The Power, but I am definitely going to check it out. Thank you so much for writing.
2naturelovers said:
Reblogged this on 2naturelovers and commented:
What a wonderful world indeed!
deborahbrasket said:
Thank you for the reblog!
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websterweb said:
reblogged… nice confluence of Love 2.0 and Louis Armstrong….
love your unabashed embrace of sending joy and micro-moments.
it’s taken me a while to understand that most moments of love pass by without notice. Honoring them is risky or messy or just not noticed.
thank you thank you, deborah
deborahbrasket said:
Yes, I love that song, you are right about the passing moments of love. I’m so glad you stopped here and really appreciate the reblog.
menomama3 said:
Now I wish there was a “love” button on WordPress. I clicked “like” but I really mean “love”. Beautiful.
deborahbrasket said:
You are so kind! I “love” your idea about a “love” button too.
ftahir01 said:
#lovingthisblog
http://www.theblogthatgotviral.wordpress.com