Written on December 12, 2025
The results are in from last Sunday's survey! The verdict, most people believe they do deserve love, a few don't, but only kinda sorta. At least, most people who took the survey. I wonder how many people saw the sign and thought "no" but didn't want to participate for whatever reason.
The conversations
I am surprised at how few "no"s there were! We got about 8 in all.
The scratched off word was some abbreviation a guy on drugs added. I regret scratching it off after he left. It's as if I tried to erase an imperfect moment from history, but history is immutable, and that moment wasn't imperfect. Oh well, lesson learned.
The first "no" was by a philosophy major who took issue with the word "deserve" (how philosophy major of him!) saying that it implies that love can be earned, when it can't.
Another "no" was by someone who said there are so many people being shot and killed, implying that if they don't even get to live, how could we say we deserve more than that?
Another one or two "no"s was due to a heartache, but they said they knew they'd get over it as time went on.
There were two separate guys that stopped to have a really good conversation with me and each other at the same time about it. The first one said "no" because he said love is transactional in practice, and so in the real world, love is never deserved for its own sake, but rather traded for something. The second guy said something similar, but I don't remember it very well.
To be honest, I'm writing this on the next Friday after the survey, so I don't really remember many of the deeper answers. I just set this website up today, so I'll try to do a blog once a week after each Sunday survey.
Answers not given
There were a few answers for "no" that I was expecting people to say, but nobody did.
The first is that I don't deserve love because I have done more wrong than right, more harm than healing, more bad than good. I expected at least one person beside me to say that they feel too guilty for their past mistakes, and aren't sure they have made up for them enough quite yet. But no.
The second is more pragmatic. I expected at least one person to say they don't deserve love, whether romantic or friendship, simply because they are boring. I so often feel that I would not "perform" well enough, that nobody would enjoy my company, even over a simple cup of coffee, and therefore I am not good enough to spend time with, let alone be loved.
Is meaningful love conditional?
Another survey I want to do is around this question. Most of us believe every person should be loved unconditionally to some degree, simply because they are a human being. And that unconditional love, perhaps a mother's love, is the basis and foundation for their mental health and security.
But it seems that some love should be conditional. Otherwise, it would be nothing special when someone says those three words, or when a person is chosen by a romantic partner, and it wouldn't hurt so much to be rejected, either by a partner, or a friend or friend group.
In this case, it seems that some love must be deserved, or perhaps earned. And maybe even continually. And maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it keeps us on our toes in a good way, sharpening our skills and cultivating our talents. Maybe it keeps us asking ourselves how exactly we make the world a better place, how we positively relate to others, and maybe even what our purpose is in this life.
Anyway, thanks for reading, you two or three people who found your way here!