It is believed that the significance of this phrase, coined by Hermes Trismegistus, holds the key to all mysteries, and what is love if not mankind’s biggest mystery?
Mea culpa. I admit, I was human and weak and I erred: I loved. It is said that most people don’t admit their mistakes as this would mean to admit to themselves and to others that they will not mistake again.
I don’t want to “chill” and “keep it light” when comes to love. I don’t want to stop questioning my human nature and what it invokes. Is our desire for atonement and immortality that makes us pour our hearts into making our dreams and ideals a reality?
Is our demoniac nature or our divine self that push us into wanting to experience this amazing amalgam of pleasure, pain, laughter, cry, stolen moments of happiness, sacrifice of one’s liberty and personal drama?
A friend of mine asked me what I thought love was. How do I perceive it at 34? Was it different at 23? Will it be different at 42? It is said that love is like measles: the later it comes in life, the deadlier. Goethe’s immortality was at stake because of his sexagenarian, tactless and reckless love for Bettina, 20 years his junior.
Let me ask again: is love staying up all night with a sick child? Isn’t that just selfish gene-protecting love? We want to insure that our offsprings will survive so they can carry our worthless genes. Is love for our children selfless?
What is love? Is it true we can’t love others unless we love ourselves? Is it true masturbation is the only sincere form of making love with someone you love most? How much from the love we think we offer is selfless love (we love ourselves for who we become when we are in love, and we hate how we decay when we fall out of love) or is just genuine selfless love? Can we live without it and still be good people? If I tell you whom I love, can you tell me who I am?
Is love something you do against your own pleasure just to satisfy a person you care about? Is love the emotional rollercoaster that takes you up and down to only discard you like a breathless and exhausted but fulfilled rag doll?
Can the butterfly in the stomach be labeled as love or infatuation? Is there any difference? Is it the habit, the closeness, the drudgery of routine where you just comfortably know what is next be defined as love? Can love co-exist without being swept away or suffocated by the much stronger voluptuousness, eroticism and emotional freedom?
Can a full-blown dreamer really love without idealizing it? Were Bettina’s feelings for Goethe (this deceiving father of “Young Werther” and an entire generation of romantics who committed suicide in the name of love) pure and platonic or she clang on him because she feebly hoped she will be tied to his fame, thus becoming immortal? Is platonic love real without being physically consummated?
Is love Mother Nature’s trick to insure the continuation of the species and a word invented by men to get free sex? Does love wipe out our senses and exacerbates our sensibility? Does love make the world go ‘round with a little help from intrinsic angular momentum? Are you sure “gravitation is certainly not responsible for people falling in love”? Is love “all we need”?
Quantum Physics tells us that the very act of observing something changes it. According to this concept and to Parmenides, the moment we start observing love, we start killing it, changing it, deteriorating it. Death begins when we are born. Love starts dying when we fall in love. Quantum Physics killed love.
The Butterfly Effect of Chaos Theory says the tiniest flap of a wing can produce a disaster. A butterfly wanders around and two people disastrously fall out of love. Nature is against people falling in love. Mother Nature only wants us to perpetuate, hence she came with this wicked concoction, this drug of which we want more, about which we have the impression we cannot live without: love, the two years lasting hormone. Think about it, the devilish plan is so perfect is almost divine. Two years would suffice to support the: incipient coupling phase, mating, impregnating, pregnancy, giving birth. Once the offspring is out, Mother Nature rests her case and ends human love, leaving instead the common goal of two adults protecting a defenseless creature, only tied by, sometimes, friendship, some respect and closeness, as accomplices in committing the act of perpetuation. As sociologically proven (one in two couples divorces), closeness is not enough. Unfortunately, that’s all we got. So, we can settle for these leftovers of human affection, formerly known as “love” or we can live without it. No one died out of lack of love. But do we want to live without it, poorer than dirt and drier than Sahara? Do we desire emotional states that cannot or are not worthy to be expressed in words? If destiny is a matter of destination, what takes us there then? Love?
5 comments:
Lucky is the one that receives your love.
I had my coffee and read your post. I can say it was a good Saturday.
Thank you, Diana.
One day, when I was about your age, I had pondered the exact same question. I had been married for a little over a year, then divorced, to a woman who admitted to me on the day before our wedding that she did not love me, so I have only myself to blame.
I came to a conclusion that seems at first callous, but in my opinion, realistic. There is no such thing as a selfless act. I don't know exactly what love is, but I know it when I see (or feel) it. When you dig down deeply, everything we do is because it's what we chose, or decided to do, regardless of whether it gives us pleasure or pain, it is ultimately what -we- decided was what was "best" for whatever situation presented itself. Like I said, I realize that sounds callous, but even the giving of one's own life to save a loved one (or perhaps even a complete stranger) would have probably been a conscious decision. Is it better to die at least trying to save a life than it is to live knowing you let someone die when you probably could have saved them? Take the selfish choice, save them.
I echo Anonymous, Diane. Lucky is the man who receives your love.
The reason we do not fully understand LOVE is the same reason humanity struggles from day to day, making mistakes, trying again and hopefully evolving; it is a deliberate act of our superconsciousness, God-self, Creator or whatever label you wish to give it.
We are evolving faster than at any other time in history, learning more in weeks than we used to learn in years or even decades. Our search is more desperate and our need becomes ever greater, the closer we get to finding the answer and the truth.
We are love. It is the embodiment of our essence. Love is our natural state and is the vibration we seek to return to.
Everything we do in the name of love, whether falling in love, giving love to another in the form of support, protection, guidance, empathy, or anything else, by the very nature of energy and the vibration of love, comes back to us multiplied.
Rules created by the few for the many that are there to control, have made it difficult to know what is truth and what is not. It takes time and reflection to reach the conclusion, with confidence, that loving oneself first is the key to being able to love someone else and that there is nothing wrong with there not being such a thing as a selfless act of love; loving ourselves enough to feel good about loving another or doing something loving for another is key to being fulfilled, happy, content, comforted, possibly even complete in purpose.
Love is not the answer to the question. Love is both the question and the answer.
The information here is great. I will invite my friends here.
Thanks
Thanks all. I appreciate your kind words.
Best, Diana
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