The Purpose of Love

Love serves multiple interconnected purposes that seem fundamental to human experience and flourishing.

The Foundation of Connection

At its core, love creates deep bonds that motivate care, protection, and sacrifice for others’ wellbeing. This serves an evolutionary function - romantic love helps form stable partnerships for raising children, while parental love drives the intense investment needed to nurture vulnerable offspring to independence. The love between friends and family members builds networks of mutual support that help everyone survive and thrive.

Beyond Survival: Meaning and Purpose

But love goes beyond mere survival. It provides profound meaning and fulfillment, giving people something larger than themselves to care about. When we love someone, their happiness becomes intertwined with our own, expanding our sense of purpose beyond self-interest. This creates a kind of transcendence - we become willing to endure hardship, make sacrifices, and grow in ways we never would for ourselves alone.

The Transformative Power

Love also transforms us. It demands vulnerability, empathy, and the ability to see beyond our own perspective. Through loving relationships, we develop compassion, learn to forgive, and discover parts of ourselves we might never have known existed. The mirror of another’s love can help us become more fully who we’re meant to be.

Bridging the Cosmic Gap

Perhaps most importantly, love creates connection in a universe that can feel vast and isolating. It bridges the fundamental separateness between individuals, offering glimpses of unity and understanding that seem to touch something essential about what it means to be human.

Whether love has some cosmic purpose beyond human psychology and evolution, I can’t say with certainty. But its impact on human lives - the way it motivates growth, sacrifice, creativity, and meaning - suggests it serves something vital in the human experience.