#areum.para

[my-id-eas]

How do your paras define love?

In my AWOL cosm, which focuses on (fictional) K-pop record label AWOL Entertainment, girl group WonderMod did a project right after their hiatus officially ended. Each one made a video where they gave their personal answers to the following questions:

What is love?

What is true love?

What is fake love?

How do you know when you’re in love?

(Their answers ended up fueling the lyrics to a song on their 10-year anniversary album.)

Daydreaming those videos, and each member’s answers to the questions, has given me a lot of insight into who they are. And trying to come up with 7 definitions of love was a very fun exercise. I’ll share WonderMod’s answers (roughly speaking) below, and I think it’d be cool to hear from you guys as well about how your paras define love.

Hanbyeol: Love is about connection. There’s that idea, that myth, that there’s a red thread connecting all the people who are supposed to meet. I think love is like that. It’s something you just know when it happens, and there’s not much else like it to compare it to. It starts out as something hard to explain, but you just intuitively know that you’re connected to the person... not just in an interest way, like your emotions and who you are, now there’s another person in the mix. That’s how it starts, at least. But threads can break easily, and if you want love to last, you have to put in some kind of intentional effort to strengthen that connection, on a different level than where it started. That’s true love to me. I guess fake love would be trying to deny that fact. Things like “we’re meant to be, the stars aligned for us,” when you haven’t known each other for more than a month or two, that sort of thing.

Gyuri: To me, I know I love something when I invest time in it. I love dance. So I set time aside just for dance, even when it’s not the most convenient. I guess with people, it’s more like wanting to spend time with them not to do some other thing, but just to be with them. It’s a drive towards the person or thing, that doesn’t have some other motive. That’s why love doesn’t make sense half the time. It’s its own separate logic, I think, that nobody gets yet. And that’s probably a good thing. True love... well, fake love is just wanting to be with someone or something, but for another reason. Like if I went on a date with someone because I liked the restaurant we were going to. That’s a bad example, but you get the idea. True love is just not that. Although... I think it’s important that you’re not the only one giving their time. True love is when both people love each other. Like with dance, I spend so much of my time on it, and in turn I get better and I feel happier and more accomplished, and I just enjoy it for what it is. That’s true love.

Hyerin: I don’t think love is a feeling... there are lots of feelings that come with love, and feelings that motivate love, but love itself is more of an action. To me it’s about gratitude. The ways that you show somebody that you’re glad they’re there in your life. I guess that’s the core of love, then, is being grateful for something. Being happy that it’s a part of your life. And then that gratitude is what motivates you to do all the other things that love is. I don’t think you can have true love without both. You have to have the feeling, and you have to have the action. Action with no heart in it is fake love. And feeling love but not acting in a way that shows that, I guess that’s a different kind of fake love. I don’t know how you could really love somebody and not feel moved to do something that shows it.

Won: Love is kind of a matter of priority. If I love somebody, or I love doing a certain thing, I make that a priority in my life. If I have a ton of boring work to do that I hate but I still make it a priority, it’s because I love having a job, ya know? Although there’s no joy in that. Doesn’t seem fair to call that love. That‘s what fake love is, “love” without any joy. So priority, that’s more of a side effect of love. Love is when you’re invested in something just because of what it is, not because you have to be. It’s not an easy thing to pin down. I don’t even really like that definition. I need to work on that. But what I know is... when someone I love and I are in danger, or in trouble, and I think of them first, that’s when I know. That’s true love. It’s when you care about something that much. That you’ll put it before yourself. True love changes you. It changes the way you think. It’s like extending the boundaries that define you to include someone else, and now their life is just as or more important that your own. Seems like a strange thing for people to do... and yet it’s our biggest strength, in a way. It’s what’s kept us around, is being loved.

Soomi: Love is simpler than people make it out to be. I’m not trying to be a killjoy, but love isn’t some crazy complicated inexplicable thing. It just means you want something to keep existing. To love something is want it to exist. The only trouble with that, of course, is that means love isn’t always a good thing. And people don’t like to admit that. But hate for one thing is just love for something else. War is motivated by love. Everything anyone’s done to hurt you was motivated by love. It’s a dangerous thing. But see, I don’t think there’s really “fake love.” You either care about something’s existence or you don’t. But there’s fake love in the sense of not understanding who’s really loving what. Maybe someone doesn’t love their girlfriend, they just love having control over someone or some bs like that. “Bad love” is a dangerous idea, not because it isn’t real but because people get afraid of someone loving them because they think it’ll hurt them. I do think... there’s a difference between wanting something to exist and wanting something to thrive. To exist at its best. I guess that’s why true love is so rare, because how can anyone know for sure what’s best for someone else? You can’t. You have to let that person be who they are. That’s what true love is.

Areum: For me, a lot of it is about trust. I know I love somebody not in this big emotional moment, but when I feel like I can count on them. That I don’t have to be worried, because they’re around. I don’t know if that’s what love is, but that’s how I know I love somebody or something. With fake love, it’s not really its own thing, so much as it’s like thinking you love someone or someone telling you they love you when it isn’t true. The feeling has to be there or it’s just hollow. I guess if I had to define what love itself is... I think it can be a lot of different things. There’s not just one kind of love. Weren’t there 7 or 8 words for love in ancient Greece? They’re all different things, but they kinda lead to similar feelings. It’s a feeling of being at home, really, is what it is. What am I missing? Right, true love... the people I love, I feel like I can trust them. But the people I truly love are the ones that make me feel like I can trust myself. That’s the best way I can put it.

Jinju: Love’s kind of a weird feeling, if you think about it... it’s like when psychologists talk about the zone. You know, this state of mind where you’re focused but not stressed, and you’re not thinking but your head’s clear, like that. Love is like being in the zone. It is being in the zone, even. When you just have a crush on somebody, you might get all anxious about what you’re going to say to them and how they’ll respond and are they a good kisser, and all that stuff. I guess if I had to define fake love, it’d be that, but that feels too strong. It’s infatuation, which is fine, it’s just something different. But when there’s true love, all that nervousness goes out the window and it’s just you and them. You lose track of time, and you’re just there in that moment, and it’s because of someone else being there with you. Which I think is pretty cool. And it’s not just people, of course, but most people talk about being in the zone with activities they love. I think it’s true with people too. It’s not something you can make happen, or see coming. It just is. I dunno. I tend to overthink things, so those moments when I don’t are when I feel best. Naturally, that’s how I would think about love.