Love is NOT complicated! People are.
Doing my random meditation I once again strayed and thought about the nature of romantic love. I must admit, this age-old concept has boggled my mind right from when I had indepthly studied the ideas laid out in Plato's Symposium. This treatise is the most comprehensive philosophical compilation about the nature of love in all its human forms.
The wonder of it surfaced inside my soul yet again. A close friend (who self-righteously calls herself 'Miss India') and I were chatting about what makes one believe they truly love someone romantically. This after I randomly opened a Bible lying on my colleague's desk to Corinthians chapter 13. Verse 4 reads something like this: "Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.. Love never fails." Wow. Simple words with such profound meaning. Now this was contested by our 'Miss India' who says living in our contemporary world of power, sex, and money makes it difficult for this kind of love ever to exist. So to her, true love must be MUTUAL. An interesting idea. At first I wanted to disregard it because it is possible to love someone and not expect anything in return. But how often does that happen? I can't think of anyone like that anywhere nearby. If you know someone who loves without getting it in return, please drop me a line.
But then again, maybe I don't see anyone personify the Biblical view of love because "Love is not boastful." I'm sure there's someone out there who does not boast about what they feel for their loved one. Real love may be so intense that it is sometimes seems best left unsaid and not admitted. 'Miss India's' contention that your lover would never let you suffer, wait, or reject you if love were true. Somehow I wish that were the case! Although her theory makes a lot of intuitive sense, she probably espouses it as a result of deep wishful thinking or from her experience of never being single. She tells me she has experienced true love because her lover was there for her in the morning, and never made her wait, etc. According to her love is useless if it is one-sided. In this day and age where people's motto has moved from "Keep up with the Jones'" to "Get ahead of the Jones'" if true love is not reciprocated, it doesn't get you anywhere. You are wasting your time and energy sista! If the person you love does not love you back, you will most likely be left unmarried, without children, and without a status identity.
The most important idea she put across, which is the only real argument I agreed with her on, is that often people are in love with the idea of the person they claim to love.. "If that person came into my life, I would be able to show him off like no tomorrow" sort of a thing. Ideas are not real.
Well in any case, love is not blind.. not cruel.. not complicated. It is people who are blind, cruel, and complicated.
More on love at a later time.
The wonder of it surfaced inside my soul yet again. A close friend (who self-righteously calls herself 'Miss India') and I were chatting about what makes one believe they truly love someone romantically. This after I randomly opened a Bible lying on my colleague's desk to Corinthians chapter 13. Verse 4 reads something like this: "Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.. Love never fails." Wow. Simple words with such profound meaning. Now this was contested by our 'Miss India' who says living in our contemporary world of power, sex, and money makes it difficult for this kind of love ever to exist. So to her, true love must be MUTUAL. An interesting idea. At first I wanted to disregard it because it is possible to love someone and not expect anything in return. But how often does that happen? I can't think of anyone like that anywhere nearby. If you know someone who loves without getting it in return, please drop me a line.
But then again, maybe I don't see anyone personify the Biblical view of love because "Love is not boastful." I'm sure there's someone out there who does not boast about what they feel for their loved one. Real love may be so intense that it is sometimes seems best left unsaid and not admitted. 'Miss India's' contention that your lover would never let you suffer, wait, or reject you if love were true. Somehow I wish that were the case! Although her theory makes a lot of intuitive sense, she probably espouses it as a result of deep wishful thinking or from her experience of never being single. She tells me she has experienced true love because her lover was there for her in the morning, and never made her wait, etc. According to her love is useless if it is one-sided. In this day and age where people's motto has moved from "Keep up with the Jones'" to "Get ahead of the Jones'" if true love is not reciprocated, it doesn't get you anywhere. You are wasting your time and energy sista! If the person you love does not love you back, you will most likely be left unmarried, without children, and without a status identity.
The most important idea she put across, which is the only real argument I agreed with her on, is that often people are in love with the idea of the person they claim to love.. "If that person came into my life, I would be able to show him off like no tomorrow" sort of a thing. Ideas are not real.
Well in any case, love is not blind.. not cruel.. not complicated. It is people who are blind, cruel, and complicated.
More on love at a later time.
posted by Mubeena Mohammed at 4:15 PM
3 Comments:
My ex-girlfriend's prophetic lines, "everything in this world is repleaceable".
She stuck to her word when she decided to call it quits, and although I didn't agree to her then, atleast now I believe, "most things in this world are repleacable".
When we look for love (and I repeat not lust), we don't really look for the outer cover. Love, i guess then stands primarily for caring, and in todays world compatibility. Back then (i really don't know when to demarkate) I guess compromises were accepted norms, but now we want to compromise as little as possible.
Hence as with time and age, something very simple and sweet has metamorphised into a complex idea, but hasn't us all?
A lady writer once said that the meaning of life, true love, and all such stuff way down her priority list. On top of that list was how she looked and smelled. You are not her but do come down from that pedestal where one confuses passion with love, sharing from taking, getting and giving...Paul was ennobling love in Corinthians; in real life I wondered if he could to mange one relationship; why he practically reinvented Jesus!
that previous comment wasn't to trivialize, heavens no! My point is this: get real! Life is a school of hardknocks, always was, always will be. We get what we build up, what we "invest" in. It may help knowing the ways to woo, the apparent convulations of caring, the pitfalls of communicating but if its "true love"--this thing will work out. Never despair. Nature and genes are on your side. Go with the flow.
Post a Comment
<< Home