Skip to main content

What is Love?

There is a mythology in our culture that love just happens. As a result, the depressed often sit around passively waiting for someone to love them. But love doesn't work that way. To get love and keep the love you have to go out and be active and learn a variety of specific skills.
Most of us get our ideas of love from popular culture. We come to believe that love is something that sweeps us off our feet. But the pop-culture idea of love consists of unrealistic images created for entertainment, which is one reason so many of us are set up to be depressed. It's part of our national vulnerability, like eating junk food, constantly stimulated by images of instant gratification. We think it is love when it's simply distraction and infatuation.
Love is a force of nature. However much we may want to, we can not command, demand, or take away love, any more than we can command the moon and the stars and the wind and the rain to come and go according to our whims. We may have some limited ability to change the weather, but we do so at the risk of upsetting an ecological balance we don't fully understand. Similarly, we can stage a seduction or mount a courtship, but the result is more likely to be infatuation, or two illusions dancing together, than love.

Love is bigger than you are. You can invite love, but you cannot dictate how, when, and where love expresses itself. You can choose to surrender to love or not, but in the end, love strikes like lightning: unpredictable and irrefutable. You can even find yourself loving people you don't like at all. Love does not come with conditions, stipulations, addenda, or codes. Like the sun, love radiates independently of our fears and desires.

Love is inherently free. It cannot be bought, sold, or traded. You cannot make someone love you, nor can you prevent it — not for any amount of money. Love cannot be imprisoned, nor can it be legislated. Love is not a substance, not a commodity, not even a marketable power source. Love has no territory, no borders, no quantifiable mass or energy output.

One can buy marriage partners. Marriage is a matter for the law, for rules and courts and property rights. In the past, the marriage price, or dowry, and in the present, alimony and the prenuptial agreement, make it clear that marriage is all about contracts. But as we all know, marriages, whether arranged or not, may have little to do with love. Love itself cannot be sold.

One can buy loyalty, companionship, attention, and perhaps even compassion, but love itself cannot be bought. It comes, or not, by grace, of its own will and in its own timing, subject to no human's planning.

Love cannot be turned on as a reward. It cannot be turned off as a punishment. Only something else pretending to be love can be used as a lure, as a hook, for bait and switch, imitated, insinuated, but the real deal can never be delivered if it doesn't spring freely from the heart.

This doesn't mean that love allows destructive and abusive behaviors to go unchecked. Love speaks out for justice and protests when harm is being done. Love points out the consequences of hurting oneself or others. Love allows room for anger, grief, or pain to be expressed and released. But love does not threaten to withhold itself if it doesn't get what it wants. Love does not say, directly or indirectly, "If you are a bad boy, Mommy won't love you anymore." Love does not say, "Daddy's little girl doesn't do that." Love does not say, "If you want to be loved, you must be nice," or "Do what I want," or "Never love anyone else," or "Promise you'll never leave me."

Love cares what becomes of you because love knows that we are all interconnected. Love is inherently compassionate and empathic. Love knows that the "other" is also oneself. This is the true nature of love, and love itself cannot be manipulated or restrained. Love honors the sovereignty of each soul. Love is its own law.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Impact of Social Class

Diversity is a familiar topic in many college psychology classes. Race, gender, sexual orientation, LGBTQ issues, ethnicity, and disability fall under the heading of diversity. Yet one topic, social class, is often overlooked or even avoided in classroom discussions of diversity. One reason for avoiding discussing social class is likely to be the fact that many American students assume they fall into the ill-defined social category known as “middle class.” In many cases, students are loath to identify themselves as “upper middle class” or “working class.” Being middle class is not risky; you pass as everyman—or everywoman. And many Americans still hold onto the idea that they live in a “classless” society. They—we—don’t. Social class is all around us, but in higher education generally and in the field of psychology specifically, with few exceptions , we—faculty members and students alike-avoid the topic. In the minds of many, social class is defined by income: To wit, higher i...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Primary Purpose of Parenting

The primary purpose of parenting is to raise fully functional adults who can take care of themselves and make a positive contribution to society. Generally speaking, this should be accomplished by eighteen. After this age, parents have less verbal influence but can still be a positive role model through actions, not words. It is with intention that marriage and family are not mentioned. When an adult understands who they are separate from their family and peers, they can then form a heathy attachment to another person. Here are ten examples of a fully functional adult. This list is not meant to be inclusive or exclusive; rather it is a spring board for discussion. Value of hard work.  There are many ways hard work can be taught: sports, drama, school, music, chores, and part-time employment are a few examples. The important lesson is that talent will only take a person so far; dedication, devotion, and determination will take them farther. It takes perseverance to struggle t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gender and Family Life

Gender roles are defined by the socio-cultural norms of any society. In most of the societies, the family systems are based on the gender roles and it is the pre-designed gender roles that help members of the family to run the family with bound responsibilities. Any disturbance in the gender role aspect may affect the smooth functioning of the easy-going of any family. But today, modern life has very much changed the family structure and the gender roles have been diverting from the traditional responsibilities and path of performance. In fact, the gap between different genders has already melted down, creating an all equal society and more equalized families. Today, there are no monarchs in families and no bout-to-obey members in families. All live together, taking decisions together, expressing opinions openly, criticizing and encouraging mutually and yet being independent and responsible. The society-defined gender roles may crash with the modern roles of family members and man...
Post a Comment
Read more