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Ramblings About Love--10/09/99

I just finished watching the movie "Meet Joe Black" and it spurred me into creative prose about the thoughts rambling through my head. I've been dwelling on issues of love lately, and the more I've thought about it, the more confused I've gotten. Ironically, most people would claim that love is exactly that: It's confusing, and it's wonderful, and it's terrible, and it causes war and heals it, it's inherently paradoxical, and you'll know it when it hits you like a semi-truck careening out of its own lane and down your throat while you're totally intent on going in the other direction.

But how do I refute the idea that persists in haunting me, that I can control my emotions? How can I logically address the idea of love, if it is inherently emotional and, by definition, non-logical? Maybe that's my problem, that I cannot address love in a logical manner. Perhaps I should listen to Nietzsche who penned that famous (or perhaps infamous) phrase, "God is dead", simply because we have thought him out of existence. Should I release the reasoning me and embrace the feeling me? Should I ignore my ambitions and well thought out future for an emotion I don't even know how to identify? Yet I have seen people who have become so embittered by soured emotions that they never feel joy. People who have loved with abandon only to have the object of their affection become interested in another. People who have great plans for their lives, only to have such plans thwarted by a pregnancy brought on through their expression of their "undying affection" for someone who left them upon news of a new arrival. Half of the comments you might hear about love proclaim how wonderful and amazing it is, and the other half warn you of the danger, and the falsehood that tends to follow it.

Listen to the radio tuned to any frequency with lyrics, and after fifteen minutes, if not one of the songs has something to do with love, I'd be shocked. We are flooded with a plethora of songs, poems, stories, books, plays, TV shows, movies, experts on, actions because of, and explanations about love, and they all proclaim different ideas about it. "Love makes the world go 'round", "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all", "Love is a verb", "God is love", "Love is like a well; all right to taste of but bad to fall into", "Love is blind", "Love is not blind--it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less", "Love is like a rubber band. The longer it is drawn out, the thinner it gets, until it finally breaks", "True love comes only once or twice in a century", "Love is like a mushroom. You never know whether it's the real thing until it's too late", "Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays in the palm; clutch it and it darts away", "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it 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 does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails(I Corinthians 13:4-8)." Yet some of these indicate the love between two people, or the love one should have for everyone, or how to love. But how do you know when you're "in love", who to love, and what are the responsibilities of love? Dr. George W. Crane stated in "Psychology Applied" that, "If you go through the proper motions, you'll soon begin to feel the corresponding emotions."

Yet that idea brings us full circle back to the notion that perhaps love is definable. Maybe it's the feeling you have when you relate to a person in a particular way. Or maybe it's the relation. Unfortunately, the questions remain. Do I love someone if I only physically love him or her? How many prostitutes love 15-20 different men each night? Can I emotionally love someone without ever seeing him or her? Well, so say those who idolize such Hollywood icons Elvis, Madonna, Tom Cruise, Claudia Schifford, and so on. Can I love someone while I'm in love with someone else, and yet physically loving a third person? Can I love someone and yet still despise his actions? Can I desire never to be around someone and yet still feel love for her? How many people can I love at the same time? Do I have to love one person more than I do another, and if so, how do I rank the different types of love? Or is there not a difference between the way I love my mom and my wife, my child and my brother, my best friend and God Himself?

Half of the love songs written discuss how a person would go to the ends of the earth and beyond for the one he or she loves and the other half talk about the loss of such love and the attempt to cope without it. People get married on the sole basis of the fact that they are looking for someone to fill the void that is all that remains of a broken relationship. Marriages, families, self-respect, kingdoms, all have fallen due to the feelings one individual has for someone to whom he or she is not married. In the 1960's a social revolution of epic proportions was brought about not necessarily because people hated war, but because they loved "love". People have committed suicide, because they felt they were not loved or that love was hopeless, and they have escaped depression and insanity because someone else expressed love for them. Misunderstandings abound in relation to the idea of love, because what one person feels that it is is completely different from the views of another person. Even in myself I have tried to define what I view as love, and then find myself continually re-evaluating those views. How can I understand how someone else views love when I hardly know my own opinion on the subject?

I feel completely comfortable saying, "I love everybody", yet I have great difficulty telling one person that I love her. I have found differing levels of intensity of love, and I consider some people as holding more of my heart than others, yet do I truly love someone with whom I have not had any contact for years? Can I love someone who has died? Do I not love someone if I wouldn't cry at his funeral? Can't I love a woman who is married just as much as I love a woman who is not married?

~

Like I said before, the more I think about the subject, the more confused I get. But I think I've just had an epiphany about how to become less confused, and how possibly to regain peace of mind in relation to this subject. I'll quit asking questions, even rhetorical ones, and start explaining what I think is the common bond that unites all notions of love. In order to do this, perhaps one of the best methods is to discover what love is not as well as what it is. I'm trying to uncover the universal properties of love, and any example of love without a particular property is sufficient cause to believe that either that property is not a valid aspect of love, or that anything with that property cannot truly be love.

~

Love yields peace but is not necessarily peaceful. People who would adamantly insist that they love each other still spend periods of time angry with one another, or arguing with each other. I think we can accept the idea that all people have had some kind of disagreement with someone we can also safely assume they love. Yet we might still accept the idea that love comes in varying degrees, and most arguments come about because one person cares more for his idea than he does for hers. He may still love her, yet he would rather be right, or he would rather have his way than to yield to her. To love perfectly, means that self-love comes last, in all things. This does not mean that one person always yields to the other person, but that compromise is foremost in the minds of both, a mode that most closely approximates the average of any conflicting desires. Case in point, suppose she wants to spend time with her parents, and he wants to go mountain climbing. Love would not insist on one course or the other, but would try to resolve the conflict by bringing the parents with them climbing, or by doing one first and the other second, or even by separating long enough for them to do what they desire alone.

To love does not mean to love exclusively. I cannot accept the premise that just because I have a new girlfriend whom I love that I instantly cannot love anyone or anything else. Returning to the compromise idea, I can love my wife and climbing and truffles. Some things would take priority, and if forced to choose between two things, obviously I would choose one over the other. Yet rarely do we ever face such an extreme choice as that of choosing one thing necessitates never again being able to choose the other. This seems a fairly obvious point, so I'll move on.

Love is not selfish. When a man loves a woman, he will put her before himself. If such love is shared, there can be no anger. A selfish person will never sacrifice his own desires for someone else's. Even certain acts that might seem unselfish (i.e. rescuing a small child from an oncoming bus) can often carry selfish motivations (I will look like a hero, I would hate myself forever if I didn't try to save her). Moral theorists have philosophized that all actions are basically selfish, and that even Mother Theresa has done what she has done because she believes that she will go to heaven. Yet regardless of these ideas, if you would rather help someone else get what he or she wants, than get what you would want if they did not exist, that has to be an expression of love.

Love tells the truth. A lot of people tend to feel that lying, in certain cases, is acceptable. Some think that a little white lie doesn't hurt anyone. And perhaps it doesn't. But if I truly love someone, I should be able to trust that person with the truth. While there are diplomatic ways to tell the truth, the truth should still be foremost. The main reason for this is because love requires trust. I can only love someone as far as I can trust him. I cannot love someone completely without complete trust in that person's judgment. And trusting someone else's judgment requires that I be as completely honest with that person as I can. Granted there is not enough time to describe every detail of your life to someone else, but when asked, lying is not a loving response. Some may protest that when asked the question, "Does this make my butt look big" you cannot truthfully answer, "No, your butt looks big whatever you have on." or else the relationship is over, and some seriously hurt feelings will ensue. Yet I would contend that if you truly love someone, you can tell her, "yes, maybe you should try something with vertical stripes." Or even, "It shouldn't matter, I love you regardless of what you're wearing." If she loves you, she should only ask a question like that if she wants the truth, and you should be willing to give that truth. Though this is not to say that you should volunteer information that would hurt someone, unless she would be more hurt to find out that you had withheld that information from her. For example, if you are truly annoyed when I tell a certain style of joke, or by some other quirk, I would rather you tell me that it bothers you when it first does, rather than holding it inside where it can fester like an open wound. While I may not be able to change that particular quirk, at least I will be aware of it and could perhaps attempt change. If you wait until you cannot stand it anymore, or if you avoid me in order to avoid my quirk, there is no way I could know to change, and quite likely, I would continue on in a particular way until I've annoyed someone else enough for him to approach me about it.

Love does not hurt others. Let me modify this. If I love someone, I will not knowingly or willingly hurt that person, unless I love someone or something else more, or unless that pain will prevent more pain in the long run. An extension of this is the idea that any purely selfish act is not an act of love for another person, but an act of love for yourself. You may question how this idea can coexist with the notion that love always tells the truth, but I assure you, they are not mutually exclusive. Honesty in all cases allows anyone you love to accept that you will tell the truth. Though people might not desire to hear certain criticisms about themselves, if it helps them to better themselves, perhaps those criticisms are more beneficial than they are harmful. Also, it is infinitely better to hear how someone thinks about you when they first think it for two reasons. First, it allows you a chance to attempt to change that person's mind if you feel her beliefs are untrue, and second it prevents those beliefs from causing a wider rift between you in the future. It's like if someone has a piece of lettuce stuck in his teeth. You may think you're being polite and you don't want to embarrass this person, so you don't say anything, but when he discovers it for himself later, or when someone else points it out later, the embarrassment can be magnified tremendously. A small hurt is desirable if it's to prevent a larger pain. Spanking your child can be an example of this because if you instill notions of right and wrong and obeying rules in children, it will help keep them from the much larger pain that comes about from breaking rules as adults. Don't get me wrong, punishment is different from abuse, and physical or psychic abuse is not truly an expression of love, but is generally the attempt to fight back at something the abuser cannot actually attack. Spanking, or time outs, or withholding certain privileges, or whatever form of punishment you may use is very useful as a motivation for a child to learn societal norms and values, and how to act within a society, and this education may hurt the child at the time, in the long run, it will be beneficial.

Love is not jealous. This seems to be a fairly fundamental issue, as some people contend that love means to be jealous of everyone else. Yet look to the previous two points. Love requires trust, and it does not hurt the other person. To be jealous is to demand exclusive devotion to one's self. Being jealous of another person means also that you do not trust that person's judgment and the absence of trust generally hurts considerably. As the saying goes, "If you love something, set it free. If it does not return, it was never truly yours." Jealousy generally suspects the other person of withholding something and of not being truthful. While this may be a justified belief, in many cases it is not, and psychologically speaking, those who do not trust others are generally those who are the least trustworthy. Also, from two earlier points, love does not mean to love exclusively, and love is not selfish. Jealousy is selfish to the extreme, in that it demands that the person you love must love only you in return. But wait, you may exclaim. God loves everyone, and God is a "jealous God" who wants us not to have other gods before Him. Sure, God is jealous, but God is also all knowing, and if you broke a covenant with Him and decided that someone/something else was more powerful than He, He would know for sure(not simply speculating, as with most jealous people). Also, He has a deal, that anyone who loves him and follows a couple of rules(that 1. you love Him with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and 2. that you love your neighbor as yourself), those people get to chill with him for eternity, and the others do not. Him being "jealous" in this context(in my opinion) simply means that if you think something else is better than He is, He'll let you find out for sure.

Love is not judgmental. This goes hand in hand with trusting another person. But in regards to telling the truth, I can be truthful about the fact that I feel a particular action is wrong, without saying that the person who commits the action is bad. Just because I think that what a serial killer did was deplorable, does not mean that I have the right, or even the desire to call him evil. Perhaps he is, and if asked, I'd definitely agree that what he did was wrong. I can say he committed a crime. I can say that according to the law, or even according to other social dictates, he should be in the electric chair or in jail until he dies. But I cannot lovingly say he is evil and will go to hell.

Love is useless if it does not change your behavior or attitude. I cannot love someone if I can completely ignore her or his opinion about something. The more you love a person, the more that person's opinions mean to you. This ties in with not being selfish, and with striving to compromise. Coming to love someone often means changing certain things. If you discover that something you do hurts someone else, you should at least try to change that behavior. This is often the source from which arguments spring, in that both people are unwilling to change their minds about something. He wants one thing, she wants another. Each is positive of her or his correctness, and without love, neither will yield until he or she simply becomes too tired to argue anymore or until the other makes some irrefutable point(which sometimes still does not end the argument). Obviously, someone whom I love should influence me if she holds contrary beliefs to mine. If I refuse to even consider her points, I cannot truly say I love her, at least not more than I love myself. On the other hand, even if I disagree with her, my behavior will be affected, in that I will try to correct her if she is wrong, or we will agree to disagree and not discuss it further, or that I will have spent time seriously considering the objections she has raised.

Love cannot hate. This sounds redundant and blatantly obvious, but let me elaborate. Many people refer to something called a love-hate relationship. Where they love someone and yet hate that person at the same time. For example, one might love her father because he's her father, and yet hate him because he abuses her. Or someone might claim to love his girlfriend one week, and the next he insists that he hates her. Yet in both cases, either the individual did not love the other, or she/he did not hate the other. In the abused girl's case, perhaps she didn't hate her father, but what he did, and in the ex-boyfriend's case, perhaps he didn't love his girlfriend, but just wanted her body. Or perhaps the girl truly hated her father and only said she loved him because she thought she should, and the boy loved the girl, and hated the fact that she dumped him. Yet there cannot be true love, if the love can simply go away. If I truly love a girl, and she decides to marry someone else, I should be happy that she is happier with someone else. To be unhappy that she's not with me, means to be selfish and jealous. If I am not happy that she's happy, I did not (and do not) truly love her.

Love is honorable. More than simply not being selfish or harmful, more than not being judgmental or contentious, love views another person with regard and compassion. Love tries to help, and overlooks minor flaws, and even major flaws. Love does not spread harmful stories about another person, love does not attempt to manipulate someone else for its own gain, but not only this, love builds the other person up. Love tries to help if possible; love is when you stick up for someone who is being picked on. Love is knowing the deepest, darkest secrets about someone and not caring. It also is being willing to help solve someone else's problems, even when it might not benefit you at all. Love is when you still say good things about someone even after that person has been putting you down. Just because someone else is acting dishonorably, this does not permit you to act similarly.

Love forgives.

~

In the end, the reason love is so confusing is simply because there are so many aspects of it. Some people catch hold of one aspect of love, and tend to forget that the rest of it applies. For example, they adore the idea that love is sharing with each other, and forget that certain responsibilities come with that sharing. Or that to truly love someone, completely and unconditionally, means not to be selfish about it. Passion and love are not necessarily the same thing, though from one can spring the other, or they can be aspects of the same relationship.

And while love is definitely emotional, and it does have to do with "feelings", there are also a lot of things that must be remembered. Yet like any emotion, these rules/aspects of love, once learned, can become automatic. If someone learns to deal with his problems violently, he becomes violent, and easily angered. If someone learns not to become angry, this is referred to as acting rationally, but I contend that being calm is as much of an emotional state as being angry, it just has fewer fireworks. And since love does not include jealousy, selfishness, hatred, and anger, perhaps, ironically enough, love evokes fewer emotions than many think, but this does not mean that love is not an emotion.

~

Yet beyond all of this explanation, there does seem to be more to being in love, and to the act of loving someone. Yet that, I would say, is quite simply the magic of the emotion we call Love.