Love as a State of Perpetual Want

“To love is to be in a state of perpetual want,” wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, a line that pierces straight to the heart of our restless condition. Love, for Nietzsche, was not a serene harmony but vital turbulence: the current that keeps existence in motion. To love is to reach, to desire, to yearn for what we can never wholly grasp. It is, in his view, the very expression of life’s creative yearning, the same force that drives the artist to paint, the thinker to question, the body to live.

Love, then, is not peace; it is movement. It creates a gap in the heart, an ache, a leaning, a pull towards the other. Even in moments of deep intimacy, something remains beyond reach: the ungraspable interior of the beloved. We can touch, but not merge; understand, but never exhaust. This distance is not the failure of love but its condition. Love requires the space between to stay alive.