February 2026 "What is Love (And Joy)?" By Wyatt Tomlinson

           In my essay in the Paper Jam’s December issue, I reflected on learning that we only have limited time and what that means for communication and relationships. In the context of relationships, “…It would be easier to imagine anything else than not associating with the other person.” Recent events, however, mean that fully unpacking and elaborating upon its implied depth is both worth doing and necessary.

As it stands, the description has an incredible amount of dimension, but that dimension is merely implied. Closeness to the point of the reasons for having someone in someone else’s life being self-evident or life wouldn’t be the same without them is, certainly, love, but it’s describing the result. It’s the outcome, analogous to knowing you found the volume of some solid through integration, but that was it, with no details about the object’s shape. What love is exactly hasn’t been fully answered. Only part of a picture of a landscape has been seen, but not what is in the entire frame or field of view. What comprises that description of love is both larger in cumulative scale and smaller in the composition’s individual parts—meaningful interaction. Having that requires communication, and that requires time, which, by its happenings, is how bonds form between people, and the above level of closeness may likely result.

           Consider the following: three and a half years ago, I had a falling out with an exchange student from Poland, which taught me the basic principles of relationships, as I wrote in December, “…have an expiration date.” I haven’t seen or heard from her since, but now knowing that I once knew her has become part of tracing the current federal administration’s planned and enacted funding cuts to the Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, including its exchange student programs. I realized years later that knowing her is something of a contribution and is a nice point of closure in a sense. It was not accounted for in my original description. I learned a lesson three and a half years ago, and now another tie-in with the exact opposite connotation has presented itself. I appreciate her for what she taught me, and that appreciation is magnified in being able to use my knowledge of knowing her for a worthwhile investigation. It’s a nice thought.

           Consider another example: a good friend told me—paraphrasing—I, as a friend, didn’t have to thank them. In the context of our conversation that day, my reading of that moment was there wasn’t any obligation needed in the first place. My sister from the country of Georgia shared a similar sentiment recently. This unconditional way of viewing that situation—and by extension, nothing is expected in return—is both a result and a component, a gesture that both signifies and further builds a relationship. It is, likewise to the previous example, a part of love that I did not account for in my original description.

           What creates all these dynamics is meaningful interaction between two or more people. It’s where life, current or past travels, history, philosophy, academic material, and more are talked about, whether on a couch at home, on a video call spanning thousands of kilometers, at a front desk, or anywhere else, and (barring sleep and schedules), anytime. This, I think and believe, is what life is about: those moments and sometimes massive spans of time, talking about anything that comes to mind. They are sometimes—and oftentimes—mundane, but that has a certain beauty to it. Time seems to vanish as we enjoy each other’s company. Let’s add that to our conception of love. Meaningful conversation is also where joy is created. Joy is utterly dependent on meaning in a similar way to fulfillment. It is “beyond” happiness only in the sense it is deeper, more of an emergent property of numerous factors than directly caused by something. In that way, it is similar to love. After a certain point, math describing something—such as a volume integral—stops being math, and what it's describing can exist on its own. Joy—perhaps figuratively, perhaps not—is that way too. It stops being what informed it and becomes something else entirely. Love is that way, too, at least in how we so evidently feel. Our experience is what matters. All of this is to say: time is indeed limited, but since the interactions we have with each other can vary, those matter immensely. Everyone does. The human experience, love and joy among them, are created there. It’s an experience that feels so alive, because it is.