Love is a Verb

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
– William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Shakespeare observes that love is a verb, an act of devotion. If we read Sonnet 116 in the context of romantic love, we understand Shakespeare to be instructing us to love actively, and with vigorous constancy towards the beloved. But we can dig deeper. "Marriage of true minds" speaks to a kind of intellectual love. Shakespeare avoids cliché by choosing "true minds" over true hearts. Shakespeare advocates feeling with the head, offering a nuanced companion to the human tendency to think with the heart.

Neither is Shakespeare interested in the impetuous fatuity of youth, but a love that's "not Time's fool." Active true love never runs out. Love sustains us by being our guiding star. It's a constant in our lives as long as we understand it as a verb.