TOW: Love

I've been thinking a lot about love, and relationships and such lately.  I'm not sure why, I think it's because I keep having people who are not good matches/creepy people asking me out. I guess sometimes I think "What is love?" and this might have a lot to do with the fact that I read too many advice columns and most of what I see are people in misery and people falling in and out of love.  I know I'm hopeless because I believe things like love is forever, and that you can love friends and family forever...although I think that says a lot more about me than anything else.  But at the same time I think I'm somewhat realistic because when some people go through certain life phases, you can't go with them.  That might mean you can't be their friend or be in contact with them, at least in the conventional sense.  (But maybe that's another thought for another time.)

When I get nostalgic about love in general, Plato is someone I always think back to when I wonder what 'feeling' one should have to be in love.  Plato, beyond being great at thinking about everything in general, wrote a great piece called the Symposium in which a bunch of very well-spoken intelligent leaders of Greek society get together and have a speech competition. called an enconium where each speech giver must give a speech in honour of the goddess Eros. 



The speech I love the most is the one by the poet Aristophanes.  Aristophanes was one of the most revered classical comedians, and was considered a genius of his time.  Aristophanes begins by telling a story about how people used to be, in primal times, double-bodied beings that were attached in such a way that they were spherical creatures that rolled around.  (This is, of course, meant to be funny and it really is when you think about it.) 

They were powerful beings that challenged the gods, and Zeus, who had pity on them, decided to separate them into two halves instead of destroying them outright.  He made their skin tight and stitched them up, and made them always feel that they were looking for their other half.   When two people who have been separated find each other, they never want to be separated again. Aristophanes said that as long as we work with the goddess of Love, we can again find wholeness.  The piece is meant to be comedic, but comes off with a strong sense of truth to it.  I think a lot of us feeling like we spending our lives looking for something, or someone, to complete us.

And whenever I think about the feeling of love, I think about that.  I think we always think we are half of something, and not a whole something.  We're always searching for that one person, that one activity, and that one object that we can love with our whole hearts.

And sometimes I wonder, where do our feelings reside in this search for the one thing that will rule us all?  When you have a crush on someone, is that part of love, or is that something else?  When you feel turmoil, or you read poems of people that can't sleep, can't eat, have the jitters, is that feeling love, or is that something else?  Or when you think romance, is that enough to call that love?

I think in English we use love to mean many different things, but I always wonder if love isn't about the greatest goods in our lives.  Love should be edifying.  As in, love should make us feel whole, should make us feel more than ourselves, just alone.  I feel that true love, the best kinds, are the kinds that make life worth living, and make life 'good' not necessarily always 'exciting' in the same way that a romantic partner is, but love is something stable and useful in human moral life. 

 But I still wonder, when do all the other little forms of love, of those overflowing feelings we have for romantic partners, for friends, for strangers, turn into that better thing?  And what feelings are red herrings, that we think are good for us, but actually harm us in the long run?  (Like those romantic feelings that cloud our judgment.)

I don't really have an answer this week to what I'm thinking about in that sense and I don't think I'm required, especially at this point of my life, to have an answer to a question like that.   But I do think it's always good to love all people....and by love I mean to try and provide those moral goods in other people's lives, in hopes it enriches their happiness and sense of well-being.  Because we all need to be loved, even if it's just a little, sometimes that's enough when your day has gone wrong and everything seems upside down, sometimes people just need to say that they care, or show that they care, to make sense of things.