Time Is The Judge Of Love, Not Its Destroyer

Norton's hypothesis proposing terms of mortal and immortal love

“Love is an illusion and the brutal persistence of time will destroy you.”

…or will it?

Does time destroy love?

That line popped into my feed recently. It’s the sort of dark, fatalistic statement that gains traction online because it sounds profound.

People read it and nod (especially those following nihilistic social media pages), feeling the weight of its bleakness as though despair alone were a form of wisdom.

But I strongly disagree.

The problem isn’t with the sentiment that time wears us down.

That much is true.

Time erodes bodies, civilizations, and memories alike. The problem lies in the unexamined assumptions about love itself. Before we can decide whether time destroys love, we have to define what love even is.

For me, the definition is clear: love is the willingness to suffer.

If that definition holds, then time itself is powerless to destroy love—because suffering is the very currency that love is willing to pay.

Why Definitions Matter

Most people mistake love for a shallow, animalistic feeling.

They reduce it to a flood of hormones, a rush of dopamine, oxytocin, and norepinephrine sparking inside the body during sex, new romance, or even simple attraction.

Biology has its say, but if we define love this way, it truly is an illusion because feelings fade and neurochemistry resets.

What seems like eternal passion in the first month of a relationship often collapses into routine arguments or apathy a few years later.

But reducing love to hormones is like reducing courage to adrenaline.

Adrenaline can be a factor, yes, but there are many forms of courage, as it is not defined by adrenaline—it is defined by action in the presence of fear.

Likewise, love is not defined by the chemical fireworks of attraction. Love is defined by the willingness to endure suffering for the sake of something greater.

So, by definition, regardless of what kind of love we may speak of (be it romantic, parental, brotherly, etc.), love has the potential to exist for as long as there are two conditions met:

1. An entity with a consciousness exists, and

2. A reason why that consciousness would choose to endure.

If you love your child, you are willing to stay awake through the night when they are sick. If you love your wife, you are willing to work jobs you hate or endure humiliation so she and the children can eat.

If you love your people, you are willing to put your life on the line for their survival or victory in battle.

These are not illusions. They are measurable costs paid with the coin of suffering.

So long as there is consciousness, love only fades with direct proportion to its why.

What Time Does To You, But Not Necessarily Love

Time will eventually kill you, your physical body, sure enough.

But that doesn’t mean that your physical death, in the form that you are currently in reading these words, is the definitive end of the love your consciousness is capable of transferring over modalities of form.

You could try to argue that time destroys love because we will all eventually die over time, which would mean the collapse of condition #1, which would mean the collapse of love.

…but that’s only true if you believe that consciousness definitively ends at what we commonly define as death.

I do not believe that consciousness definitively ends at what we commonly define as death because I understand consciousness to be a sentient form of energy, or the manifestation of combined energies, while energy can neither be created nor destroyed in accordance with the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Every human being is mortal. Time will strip us of youth, strength, and eventually, life itself. None of us escape.

The Proposition Of Mortal and Immortal Reasons For Love’s Continuance

What if you don’t keep your memories as your consciousness changes form upon death?

I ask myself.

This is the begged question if we assume that consciousness is a form or manifestation of energy that can neither be created nor destroyed but merely changes form.

Therein, I propose the hypothesis that there are reasons why that exist outside of one’s current form that I would classify as “Immortal Whys”.

A “mortal why” would be a reason to endure that your physical brain remembers. However, time degrades the brain. Therefore, as time degrades the brain, so too must then the memory of why the self should endure, which then transmutes into the degradation of love.

This is what nihilists mean when they say that time destroys all love.

But here is why I know that there are immortal reasons for love, due to this contradiction: Why does energy endure?

Energy itself. Why does it endure?

As energy can neither be created nor destroyed but transforms, why does it endure the eternally transformative process?

That “why” is an immortal reason of the universe itself—beyond, and external to, the physical body—immortal because it is the driving and sustaining force of energy’s infinite existence through timeless transmutations.

In true Nietzschean form, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

Energy must have a why to continue strong enough to bear any how.

This means there must be a form of love that extends beyond our mortal selves, but merely changes form in correlation with the consciousness that retains the will to endure doing so.

In this sense, time is the judge of love, not its destroyer.

Traditional, Abrahamic marriages are vowed upon the mortal why “Till death do us part.”

A married couple may stay together for thirty years for their children’s sake, but divorce. Their reason why was their children; they were willing to endure each other for their children’s sake. And upon their children reaching a certain level of independence, that mortal reason why sustaining their willingness to endure each other disappears, explaining the divorce.

To me, that is a valid form of mortal love and a mortal love that fulfills its why is successful.

Another married couple may stay together for their entire lives, until death. This is mostly likely due to their mortal why extending beyond the mere raising of their children pertaining to their willingness to fulfill vows of “until death do us part.”

When death comes, they have fulfilled their vow, which is another valid form of mortal love and a mortal love that fulfills its why is successful.

And a tertiary couple may have the mind to stay even beyond death.

“[Your mother] didn’t give me a reason to abandon her in life—so why would I abandon her in death?” —Erik, Yield

This would have to be a love based on a reason beyond a mere mortal’s oath.

Closing

Love is not an illusion. Love is the willingness to suffer.

The entity willing to love is the consciousness.

As consciousness is a sentient manifestation of energy, and energy can neither be created nor destroyed—there are forms of mortal and immortal love. The brain and body may remember one, but the eternal energy of your consciousness may remember another through its infinite transmutations after it sheds its mortal coil.

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