To everyone and everything that I have ever loved,
“Love” is one of the most — if not the most — elusive emotions for a person to experience. Whether you’re an artist or a scholar, defining “love” is a nearly impossible task. Perhaps due to its abstractness or broad definition, conveying this emotion is an intricate skill that takes years to perfect.
Think of Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan by Ilya Repin and how the depiction of familial passions comes to a climax with the depictions of grief in loss. Consider one of my favorite poets T. S. Eliot and how “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” expresses the complexities of unrequited romantic sexual frustration. Both forms of artistry depict different forms of love exceptionally, but required years of skill to perfect.
Even scholars like Albert Camus dictate that “A love which cannot be faced with reality is not a real love,” defining love through a lens of existential authenticity. Camus suggests that love must confront the raw truths of human existence to hold genuine meaning. These varied depictions, whether through art, poetry or philosophy, demonstrate that love transcends simplistic definitions. Its elusiveness lies in its duality: love is both deeply personal and universally resonant.
So now that it is “cuffing season,” it leaves young college students like me to wonder: What is my definition of “love” and how can I cope with it?
Undeniably, I miss my family. After every phone call to my parents, I get filled with the urge to fly back home. The place my home holds in my heart is irreplaceable; longing for my favorite places is at the forefront of my mind as finals approach. I miss my best friends and crave my town’s local library. Then again, when I went back home and got briefly separated from my life at Hopkins, I found myself craving the castle-like atmosphere of the MSE Library Annex. I was shocked to find that I missed the bustle of the cityscape when I took the JHMI to the medical campus and lamented the loss of my Amazon mattress topper as I slept in my bed at home.
Above all, I found myself craving the hugs from my college friends. To be able to love “home” is to find your definition of “home.” Having my heart torn between two worlds is confusing, but I must learn that love is the byproduct of living experiences. My ventures in Baltimore and Pensacola will lead me to love both halves of home.
For me, learning is its own kind of love — one that fills life with passion and purpose. Each time I open a book, engage with a new idea or ask a question, I feel a connection spark. As a lover of the humanities at a predominantly STEM-focused school, I expect to hear jokes about my balancing act between writing and chemistry. Knowledge isn’t a companion in the conventional sense, but it’s something that grows alongside me, shaping me and allowing me to shape it in return.
In learning, there’s an endless opportunity to be more: more curious, more aware and more engaged with the world and its wonders. To be in love with learning is to commit to the pursuit of truth and the beauty of never-ending questions, even when they lead to uncertainty. And just as with any love, it requires patience, acceptance and the willingness to evolve. I am still learning, and for that, I am endlessly grateful.
As a teenager, I often thought that romantic love was anything but what the poets say. How can love be soft like light when it causes me such anguish when I lose it? How can it be as gentle as a summer breeze when it leaves me feeling as raw as a wound? If love is supposed to complete us, why does it often leave us feeling so empty? Why do I love to give so much of myself?
Now that I’m growing older, I realize that romantic love does not begin with the desire for companionship, but a mutual devotion and friendship for one another. To accomplish this, I must concede that there are many things that I need to learn about loving, starting with loving myself. Though I often struggle with coming to terms with the fact that I will never be “perfect,” I can still work to improve the person I am by finding what makes me happy.
So to everyone and everything I have ever loved: Thank you for being part of my journey, imperfect as it may be. I know that love, in all its forms — whether for people, places or ideas — will always challenge me to give more than I feel I have and to forgive myself when I fall short. If I were perfect, I’d be able to give my entire heart to those I love, but my imperfections are part of the beauty of learning to love and to love well.
Every day, I discover more about who I am through what and how I love. With each step, I come closer to understanding that love isn’t about filling an empty space but about expanding my capacity for kindness, patience and acceptance. Learning to appreciate these small discoveries, to be gentle with myself when I stumble and to embrace love as an evolving journey instead of a destination is how I’ve started to feel whole again.
Kaylee Nguyen is a freshman from Pensacola, Fla. studying Molecular & Cellular Biology and Writing Seminars.
