Ingrid:  What is the best thing about loving someone?

Aaron:  At the spiritual level, [the best thing about loving someone] … lies in each partner’s new found reference point in the other.  We can better chart the chaos, and there is comfort there. …  We receive in a loved one a new point of reference against which to posit virtual axes.

Ingrid:  And now Aaron’s full, original answer to the question, ”What is the best thing about loving someone?”

Aaron:  i just woke up, so my brain is not firing all that well just yet.  all i’m coming up with right now is that animals get physical rewards for activities that tend to promote the welfare of the species, and that as mental beings we receive in a loved one a new point of reference against which to posit virtual axes.

the above is kind of rude and only half makes sense, so i will expand and polish and perhaps change the whole thing tonight.

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Ingrid:  Later on that night…

Aaron:  Okay, a better version.  Hopefully.  Or just one with more words.

In the opening paragraphs of The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton, describing the plight of his artist parents, very aptly describes the broader conflict between man the animal and man the spirit.

My father and mother were captives in that world, knowing they did 
not belong with it or in it, and yet unable to get away from it. They 
were in the world and not of it not because they were saints, but in a 
different way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts 
a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it.

The crux of human desire and folly lies at the intersection of our aspirational minds and our frail and failing bodies.  And no human endeavor entails so much desire and folly as love.

To propagate our animal form and cheat the dust, we are wired at a basic level to pursue mates with the attributes that will best serve potential offspring.  It’s as rude and basic a rubric as a stamping press’ user manual.

At the spiritual level, individual desire confounds any effort of prediction or definition.  It seems most often fulfilling when a pairing is complementary, and this is not fully explicable by an imputed strategy of shoring up personal weaknesses.  Rather, I feel that this fulfillment lies in each partner’s new found reference point in the other.  We can better chart the chaos, and there is comfort there.