Terms of Endearment

Note: I wrote this down yesterday in a nicotine haze after having had some interesting discussions with some friends over the past week around love and the semantics of everything that orbits it. How confusing it all really is. How self expression seems almost Sisyphean at times. This is largely intended as a lighthearted take, so please take it as such.

(Title taken from a 1983 film that I haven't watched.)

• Friend - Old English freond: "one attached to another by feelings of personal regard and preference," from Proto-Germanic frijōjands "lover, friend". Someone you call friend is also someone you can usually call. So you don't have to sleep through a panic attack at 1 AM. Everything applies vice versa. An idyllic ideal.


• Charm - Often found in the eyes and mannerisms of whomsoever you're currently infatuated with. Gateway to other dangerous things. Exhibit caution since the word has roots in magic and witchcraft - "cast a spell".


• Dear - West Saxon: dyre. A word I've never personally used because it also sounds icky. Mostly used in formal emails and by Indian men with unrestricted internet access to harass (mostly) white women online.


• Earnest - Showing intense conviction and sincerity. Basically setting yourself up to be made fun of. Now that you're aware - can you really be earnest?


• Genuine - If you use it for yourself, you're probably not; if used for you, they don't know you well enough. But can hope to.


• Passion - Makes you write poetry and do other unspeakable things.


• Empathy - Have you felt it? I ask because even if you claim to be empathetic or know someone empathetic, how will you ever be able to use something as crude and limiting as spoken language to know/understand it? Therefore: unlikely. "Plus I've got my own shit, man."


• Sympathy - Easier to cultivate. Haven't you been hurt? Sickness you'll forget, hurt you'll somewhat remember. Therefore: listen. Assuage. Try. Try again. You'll need someone else's too at some point.


• Adore -Latin; ad+orare; pray, worship, beseech blessings - stuff like that. Conveys the same meaning these days as "like", but maybe with more gravity. Another one of those superfluous words. Interesting how the meaning has weakened down, but still holds on to some unachievable abstract ideal.


• Baby/babe - Yuck. Call them by their name instead. Twist the name for a personal touch. Go for a walk. Everything else but.


• Charity - Disgusting. Necessary. Self-serving. Self-defeating. Rarely handed out egolessly. When done often misunderstood. Chances are those who deserve it wouldn't want it, those who absolutely need it, would be even more appalled.


• Appreciate - More empirical. Latin: ad (to) + pretium (price); setting someone's or something's value appropriately. I wonder if you'd agree, but "I appreciate you" sort of sounds wrong in the context of endearment.


• Gleam - Usually expressed through a person's eyes. You'll know.


• Infatuation - Strong feelings of intense longing which stem from the very basic fact that you simply don't know the other person well enough. You hope to, because you'd want them to meet the ideal in your head. I wish your hopes come true, but just in case they don't: it'd pass, relax.


• Care - Interestingly enough, most roots of "care" mean a combination of "sorrow", "anxiety", "grief" and the likes. "Couldn't care less" is perhaps the most commonly used simile that carries this word ("could care less" means the same thing as well, oddly enough). It seems then that "to care about someone" is often defined in opposition; it doesn't sprout in a vacuum but contrasts a state of sorrow you wouldn't really want someone to be in. Maybe they mean something to you. Have you told them you care about them? What was their response? Were they jaded enough perhaps and cross questioned you on the semantics, i.e., did they tell you that they didn't understand what the word meant anymore? What was your response? Try to meet them sometime.


• Dote - This word has roots that mean: "a fool, simpleton, senile". To dote on someone then perhaps mean assuming some childlike state and treating them with genuine curiosity and wholeheartedness - children are foolish, aren't they?


• Unconditional love - Often: conditional.


• Sentimental - I may be alone in this, but why did everyone in my class after turning 14 suddenly decided to use "senti" instead? I abhor the compression. It's a beautiful word otherwise. Not even that many syllables! Someone sentimental is someone emotionally charged, someone who forms a mental atitude out of those feelings.
  Usage: If you've read till here, whoever you are, if I ever get to know that you did, I'll probably be sentimental. In a good way, of course. Hello!


• Romantic - Tradition of the Romans. High ideals. Ideals describing an ideal. Ideals that hope to achieve some ideal. The romantic takes a beautiful moment shared with someone loved - and imagines that to be their entire life with them. So be realistic. Rome fell.


• Comfort - A hammock. An embrace. A familiar smile and/or laugh. A place of understanding. A place of understanding silence. Simultaneously more and less than empathy. Telling your better half about some fucked up fetish porn you were/are into and watching them break into (controlled) laughter. Home after a dreadful day.


• Compatible - Someone who morphs with you. Endlessly. Because you also morph, change. Someone who changes with you. Someone you change in accord to. So an endlessly morphing piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is your existence. A puzzle set themed "compassion" - as the root of the word, compati, would have you believe.


• Kindness - Complex. Also simultaneously self-serving and self-defeating. Easy to accept and harder to give. When you see the raw, unalloyed version of it in someone who's trying very hard to not expect anything in return, hold them close and tell them you'd die for them. Otherwise, try giving some of yours away; if you do manage to, tell me how you did it.


• Yearn - To yearn for someone is to daydream to the point of developing a crippling maladaptive pattern where not only that someone has completely understood you (!) but is also enjoying 100% of the same activities that you do. Hell, they've started talking like you, too! Relax, everyone's yearned for something, I think. Please pay attention to the person in front of you meanwhile. Maybe they're yearning for you?


• Want - Desirability is the lowest common denominator of all the needs connecting you with other lonely people. To want is to desire - to affirm someone's need for this desirability. Although, this too is often misplaced. Lizard brain.


• Love - Gives.


• Lust - Takes.


• Cherish - The French language probably has a million terms of endearment, or so it would seem. Mon chéri - "my sweetheart" - chéri - cherish. Reminds me of cherries. A warm, fleshy, sweet exterior. Go through it. Keep going through. Suddenly: a stone.


• Boyfriend - Confused. No emotional grip. Gets bombarded with various perspectives and gets further confused. Mostly insecure about something or the other. "I'm of course not talking about myself" <- standard mindset.


• Girlfriend - I'd rather not pretend to understand more here than I really do.


• xo - Hugs/kisses. Kisses/hugs. I really don't know what's what. Use liberally.


• Understanding - Someone who's spent just enough time with you to fish out those brief moments of vulnerability to make sense of what would perhaps constitute the 0.0000000001% of your existence. You can add/take more zeroes in that figure as you see fit, as I don't have any empirical data backing it. Or anything, really.


• Heart - A rather complex organ symbolised simply as two symmetric curves parting from a point on top that taper towards the bottom at another symmetric point and form, well, a heart. Calling someone your heart perhaps means they're essential to you then. Are you essential to them?

Take care of yourself.

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