By Maeve Fitzgerald

We return to The Art of Noticing” this week, the blog where I, in my slight and comparatively short expertise in love, loss and life, take you out of your world for a moment to recognize the beauty within the little things in life. Today we are not dissecting a little thing, we are dissecting THE thing. Love. 

Love is complex. It’s this lifeline that cannot be taught, but rather felt. People endlessly chase romantic love, but love is not solely romantic. It lies within our friendships, it is in the painting on the wall and in the foam of our cappuccino.  

If we are lucky, we have people that we can turn to and tell just how deeply our love runs for them, that they are engrained in our psyche, our lungs – our beings. I was feeling down today, so I called my mom. She told me she loved me, and now I am lighter because of it. 

Platonic and familial love have enriched my life beyond comprehension. 

Growing up, I had a best friend named Ena Downey. She would compete in Irish step dancing, her competition dresses cuddled in her closet and her gold medals dangling endlessly from her bedroom walls. We would sit in our pigtails and color our princess coloring books while Play-Doh scattered the floor and the “Cinderella” VHS tape infiltrated the gray screen.

As we grew, our platonic love grew with us. Throughout elementary school, wrapping gifts together at our school’s Snowflake Festival dressed as elves. Through middle school, using our twenty dollars on yankee candles and Pink body mists at the mall. Her mom held me when I spent weeks at their house after my parent’s divorce. I still remember walking straight to her house in my green Ireland zip up after finding out and sitting in her bed, eating KitKats while salty tears streamed my cheeks.

We are both seniors in college now, graduating in the Spring. We don’t see each other much anymore besides an occasional message, but when I see her, the smell of her pool, my chocolate-rimmed lips as a toddler and the shine of her medals all quietly creep to mind. My pigtails secured with little red bows, her big green eyes and the smell of her mom’s baking. Sandbox love never dies. 

Platonic love shapes us. Whether it be my work friends that have bled into personal friends, my hometown best friend Jackie, or my roommate Malvina. Platonic love helps us see the love and romance in all of the little things in life.

Take Malvina, for instance.We have navigated university together, we have spent days and nights falling in love with our city, carefully tilting our cameras to the intricacy of the architecture, the weeping of the willows in the Public Garden and the vastness of the harbor from a dock on the esplanade. We have fallen in love with our home over and over, decorating our fridge in magnets from all of our travels abroad, notes from our best friends and photo booth strips. Malvina has shown me the love I can find away from home in movie night companion, roommate, travel partner and a best friend. 

As humans, we decorate our lives in the love we share. Whether that love be with people, art, nature or a higher power. My bedroom is showered in love. Photos of my family, a posterboard of birthday notes from my dearest friends, my dad’s old work shirts in my pajama drawer, rosary beads on my bedside table, my favorite records above my headboard. All that we do is driven by love. The movies we watch, the songs we listen to, the people we befriend. They are all extensions of the loving lens in which we view this world. 

We fit our heads in the indent of our friend’s shoulder and neck. We intertwine our fingers and hold the hands of those we love. We part our lips slightly and fit them to those we romantically admire. We play each other our favorite songs, in hopes that the ones we love will love them as we do. We lay on our lover’s chests in the grass as the sun plants a kiss on the apples of their cheeks. We mimic, and plant a kiss there as well. Love cannot be contained. 

Today, I hope that you will take a moment to find the love in your life. The friend who sent you a song that reminded them of you, the steam heating your cheeks from the dinner your mom spent hours on, the drawing your younger cousin or niece drew you that has stayed on your fridge for years. 

While romantic love is beautiful, intimate and lovely, it should not be the end goal. Embrace the journey of love, the extra time the barista took on your latte design, the perfectly cooked steak that your dad made you on the grill, the ink-smudged, crumpled corner of the note your roommate left you on her way out for the night. Listen to the lyrics and melody of that song your friend said reminded them of you. Understand that you are seen in a loving light by so many people around you. Love is like seeing your breath in the cold. When life is at its coldest, its weariest, you must look for your breath, the love around you.