Love

 "If I were loved, as I desire to be, what is there in the great sphere of the earth, and range of evil between death and birth, that I should fear-if I were loved by thee." by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Love. It is what we all desire. To be Loved. It is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, desires of Humanity. It is also a survival mechanism for the Human Race.

Yet I find that there is so much about this very primal emotion that is misunderstood. So often we mistake other things as Love.

So what is Love? Dictionary.com says Love:

noun
verb (used with object), loved, lov·ing.
verb (used without object), loved, lov·ing.
to have love or affection for another person; be in love.


And I find nothing to argue with here. Love has elements of all of that in it. Yet, in my opinion, it is something much simpler and deeply more profound that that.

An author that I used to read when I was much younger, and vastly more impressionable, said that Love is when you care about the well being of the other much more than you care about your own. And I believe that to have some validity. And yet, how can one Love oneself, which I believe is mandatory if one is to be able to Love another at all, and yet value the well being of the other more than your own? I am willing to say as much.

And then we have the many different types of Love.

There is the Love of our parents. At first it is very self interested as we are dependent on them for everything. I think that we need to be in our mid twenties at least before that changes. And then we can finally, I hope, see them for the whole Human Beings that they are then truly Love them anyway.

There is the Love of a parent for a child. It is very protective at first as they cannot protect themselves at all. And it morphs over the years as they grow and become their own person. Until finally the parent can Love the whole Human Being that they have become.

And the Love of a Dear Friend. I hope that everyone gets to experience this in their lives. It is a Love that demands and requires nothing. You Love the other because you see the unique and wonderful person that they are and welcome that with all of the good, bad, and indifferent that goes along with every Human alive.

And finally, the big one, Romantic Love. The Love of a Partner. The person that we look at and say "This is the one that I want to go to sleep with, wake up with, spend my life with". The one with whom we cannot envision our life without. The one you may or may not have children with, depending on many things.

So with all these many ways of Love how is it that it so often gets broken? Why are there divorces, life long friends and co-workers all of sudden not talking to each other and professing to be mad or even hate the other? Or estranged parents and children? What is it that so wounds that Love that it can no longer be borne and the Love becomes something else?

That is a good question to which there is not, unfortunately, not one answer. There are multitudes of answers and they all involve us at our most human times.

I believe, that the most common element of the failure of Love is that one or both of the people involved get lazy. They stop putting in the effort. And after a while it gets easy to go along as it is than to get re-engaged in the relationship.

Another common element, I believe, is one or both of the people involved become self centered. And it then becomes impossible to really see the other. And when we cannot see the other because we are self centered then it becomes real easy to blame them for everything going wrong.

So there are some of my thoughts. I could go on, and I am not going to. I invite you, Dear Reader, to make any comments that you have below. Share your thoughts with us and let me know where you agree, disagree, or think I am crazy. I am :-)

Comments

  1. AnonymousApril 5, 2023 at 6:01 PM

    Love gone wrong: well, there is the case where one does something, like cheating or even mild like keeping a secret or telling a white lie - and then JUSTIFIES it to themselves. They are then on the slippery slope of taking NO RESPONSIBILITY. The damage is appalling to any relationship, and love cannot survive. So what is love? Certainly all if the above, but I would add it is a relationship in which one takes responsibility for continually creating it.

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