POP QUIZ TIME! Which one (and only one) of these would you agree with?
a) I love my smartphone
b) I love my family/friends/significant other
c) I love my favorite foods
d) I love [name of favorite city/place]
Your answer: _______
Kind of tough, right? See, I could choose all four, so I would have gotten that question wrong. But my ex (together with many other people) think that the word “love” should be reserved for, well, mainly people you actually love–not material things like phones, places, or food.
I remember he and I discussed it one day and we sort of agreed to disagree. The way I see it, people (yes, me included) love their smartphones, for instance, because of what it lets me do: it keeps me connected to people and places in ways that perhaps other media couldn’t, and I love that. I love my favorite foods–they make me happy and keep me satisfied and healthy. I love my family, friends, and significant others, too, obviously. But I also love my native town, my current hometown, and other places I’ve been to. I love the experiences and good times they gave/give me, the memories, they ways they made me feel, the activities we did/do there…
My ex and co. have a point, I guess. How can one love a parent or a child the same way one loves an awesome shirt? And what I’d always say is that you can’t! But why limit the use of the term that way? I remember I’d always be hesitant to say “I love X” in front of him because he was older and I didn’t want him to be like “remember what we talked about…” or get into an argument because of my faulty (according to whom anyway?) use of the term “love.” (Not that we ever did, but I guess I was always that precavida–look it up.)
I guess I feel that way because of the culture I grew up around. In Spanish, there are two verbs to express love: Querer and amar. Querer is a little less than amar, though, even though the term itself also has more than one meaning: “Yo quiero a mi novio” could mean either “I love my boyfriend” or “I want my boyfriend”–both sound beautiful but may or may not mean the same thing depending ont the context. Despite its double-meaning superpower, though, querer usually doesn’t represent “as much” as amar–it’s sort of Passionate Amar’s Cute Sibling: “Te amo” is kind of like “I adore you” + “I love you” combined. That may be why Spanish speakers rarely say “Yo amo a mi iPhone”–amar has taken more of a passionate connotation that’s usually (and perhaps justly) reserved for people only.
However, I, along with many English speakers, commonly say “I love my iPhone” and I think that’s OK–it’s not a passionate love, it’s not the same love I feel for a boyfriend or my parents; it represents what I feel for a gadget that’s so intuitive and so well made; I don’t just like or enjoy it (as my ex would refer to his feelings for his own iPhone). I don’t even think enjoyment fully grasps it, right?
Oh semantics…….. What do you think about the “love” issue? I think it’s pretty silly. Choose to “love” or not “love” something. Just don’t take it to an extreme.