What is love?
According to Oxford Dictionary, “love” is “a feeling or disposition of deep affection or fondness for someone.” A quick Google search of “What is love?” will pull up a song by Haddaway, along with a number of articles & personal opinions from people across the globe. It seems that everyone is searching for love in this life. To love & to be loved is an intrinsic need we all have.
Months ago, I celebrated My Love’s birthday by gifting him tickets to The Avett Brothers’ concert in Philadelphia. I booked us an Airbnb for the night & suggested we make a short trip of it. We have a goal to visit all 50 states, & Pennsylvania has already been checked off of our list. However, we neglected to go to Philly during our first trip, so it seemed to be the perfect opportunity to explore The City of Brotherly Love.
Since gifting the tickets, Joseph & I have gotten married & traveled up the West Coast from San Diego to Seattle, but a little overnight trip planned months ago still thrilled us. We packed our bags & headed out Tuesday afternoon to our small, private room near Drexel University.
We were already hungry when we arrived in the city, & we had a few hours until the concert, so I suggested we try the iconic Philly cheesesteak. Since there seems to be a restaurant or food cart on every corner selling the sandwich, we did a little online searching for the best place to go before finally settling on Cleavers. We didn’t want to do deal with the city traffic, so we left our car at the Airbnb & walked the busy Philly streets to our destination.
Cleavers is a specialty cheesesteak shop where you can get beef, chicken or vegetarian sandwiches. It was established in 2016 by a family that has owned & operated a cheesesteak manufacturing company known for its worldwide quality & service for over 35 years. The restaurant uses USDA domestic ribeye, fresh baked bread, & artisanal ingredients in all of its food.
The sandwiches were huge, stuffed full of delicious ingredients seasoned & cooked to perfection. Joseph ordered the BBQ Cheesesteak, which was packed with ribeye steak smothered in a sweet & savory barbecue sauce & sprinkled with thick-cut bacon, with melted American cheese & thick, freshly fried onion rings on top. I ordered the Porta Fresca, a vegetarian option made with succulently prepared portobello mushrooms mixed with roasted red peppers & sauteéd spinach & topped with thick slices of fresh mozzarella cheese. Mouths watering, we devoured our sandwiches until our stomachs couldn’t hold another bite.
We took an Uber to The Mann Center, an outdoor concert venue with a beautiful view of the Philadelphia skyline. At every Avett Brothers concert, the band commissions a local artist to design a limited edition poster for the performance. For this particular concert, only 200 were created for concert attendees, & thanks to our early arrival time, we were one of the lucky ones. For the next hour, we strolled around the grounds, enjoying the warm, late-September air. As the sky began to darken, we finally found our seats & settled in for a musically magnificent evening.
To say the Avett Brothers are good artists is an understatement. Their music is art in its truest form. The lyrics are poetry. The instruments are played so expertly & yet lovingly that they go beyond just touching your ears & go straight to your soul. And the harmony in the voices reaches into your heart & draws tears in your eyes. All while listening, time ceases to exist – you are simply so entranced by the songs & music that you feel at one with it, & all you want is for it to continue to go on.
Watching the band live was a truly cathartic experience. Every song they play is heartfelt & meaningful. The lyrics are written with care, the melodies matched perfectly to the message that is to be portrayed, & the harmony pulls everything together, using human voices to bring the emotion & connection to every listener. Sitting in the audience, I felt I connected to every emotional piece on the deepest level of my being, & it pulled to the surface every past & present hurt I had not dealt with. But by the end of the evening, these wounds had been treated like the most productive therapy session. With the ending encore song “No Hard Feelings,” we all stood & sang as one, Joseph & I in each other’s arms, singing both for ourselves & everyone in the room.
With love in our hearts — for ourselves, each other & our fellow beings — we left the venue with smiles on our faces. Despite the late hour & how tired we felt, we couldn’t help but chat animatedly about the performance for the next thirty minutes while we waited for our Uber to arrive. As soon as we arrived back at the room, we crashed into bed, ready for a long night’s sleep.
Our first stop the next morning was Wissahickon Valley Park, where we hiked a moderately difficult trail littered with large rocks & adorned with green trees just beginning to fade to the fall colors of red & yellow. The trail led us to a rushing waterfall & covered bridge, where we stopped briefly to listen to the water before heading back to our vehicle. The hike took longer than expected, & we were both hungry for lunch by the end.
We wanted to try a Philly pretzel, so we headed to the Reading Terminal Market, a bustling indoor marketplace filled with locally owned shops. We went first to Miller’s Twist, a pretzel & ice cream shop. I ordered a classic Philly pretzel, while Joseph ordered a pretzel dog, chicken feta sausage, & cinnamon sticks. The golden brown pretzel was served warm, sprinkled with large cubes of salt that melted into the soft bread when I took a bite. I understand now why everyone raves about Philly pretzels – I had to stop myself from returning after my last bite to order more. Joseph’s chicken feta sausage was wrapped in the same delicious, aureate creation, & the meat was moist & full of flavor. As for the pretzel dog, I’ll just say that it made me want to eat hot dogs again. The cinnamon sticks were soft & just the right level of sweet, with a dash of cinnamon that made me dream of the cooler, cozy months to come.
Next, we ordered coffees from Old City Coffee, & then, since I was still hungry after eating my one pretzel, we went to Kamal’s Middle Eastern Specialities, a family-owned restaurant of 30 years serving lovingly prepared dishes made with fresh ingredients. I ordered the falafel, which is made from chickpeas & fava beans that were soaked overnight & fried fresh every morning. It came with a small salad, creamy hummus, & a lovely & light green tabbouleh.
Our stomachs now satisfied, we walked to LOVE Park, where the LOVE sculpture by Robert Indiana stands tall in the middle of the courtyard. It’s a well-known landmark of the City of Brotherly Love that was created in 1976. Joseph & I took our required tourist photo with the artwork, & then decided it was time to head home.
What is love? All throughout this trip, I felt like I encountered it everywhere I went. From the beginning, when Joseph’s & my mutual love for music inspired me to express my love for him by gifting tickets to the band he loves most; to all of the local food we tasted, lovingly prepared in family-owned restaurants; to the concert, lovingly performed by a band started by two brothers who seem to understand the human heart on a deeper level than most, which I enjoyed while sneaking glances to my right of my love & feeling my heart swell to see him smiling so wide; to gazing up at a sculpture with the word itself painted in bright red.
What is love? Can it be a fleeting feeling like the butterflies at the beginning of a relationship? Can it be the underlying force of an argument between two people who know each other better than anyone else? Can it be an act of service for another human? Or perhaps it’s a shared look of two longtime companions, who in that moment can express their thoughts without any words or actions at all? Does it only exist when it is perfect & unconditional, or is true love imperfect & raw, the most basic & yet complicated human emotion?
Love is not something that can be easily defined by Oxford dictionary, & yet, as the internet has proven, it’s something we are all trying desperately to define & understand.
To me, love exists in all areas of life. It is in the simple touch that lingers on Joseph’s shoulder when I pass from behind, to let him know, even in the busyness of my day when I’m rushing from one place to the next, that I’m thinking of him. It’s in the words of comfort & support that are shared between friends. Love is in the beauty of nature that surrounds us, lovingly created by the only true source of unconditional love we will ever know. And our imperfect, human love is in the desperate yells of a fight, when the two people involved know each other so well that their tongues can be used as both tools for reconciliation & irreparable wounds.
Love is messily splattered in all different colors across the canvas of our lives, & yet its these splashes of various moments, feelings & thoughts that make our experiences on this planet beautiful. It is the absence of love that causes us the most pain, & it is the experience of love that brings us the most intense joy.
Perhaps what makes love most beautiful is that it cannot be simply defined. It’s more exquisite than a butterfly, unable to be pinned down & examined. Love cannot be put into words, but its an experience we all share. And I am finding in my life, the more we live for love, the more love we experience in even the most unexpected places.