February is so saturated
with the thought of love. To ponder about love is simply inescapable this time
of the year. So, Love was the topic of my meditation. And what I thought of, is a conception of love
that is based from the conclusion of my First Premeditation: what is the meaning of life? – a love that is guided by the principle that is Life.
I asked then,
what is this thing called Love? Have I experienced this before? If yes, then
how is it like? Is it like a tingly feeling that makes you want to go, “yieee!!!”?
If so, then, if I see a girl and I feel a tingly feeling and I feel like going “yieee!!!”
am I in love then? Or is it only that which we call infatuation – the start of
something, that thing? Perhaps it is, and then you let it grow, and grow, until
it is strong enough for you to be motivated enough to confess your love. Love
is a feeling then, that tingly, yieee like feeling, which feels good – and a motivation
for someone’s action, because you feel like pursuing her, right? You have the
motivation that is strong enough to move mountains! Or do you? What happens
when the feeling subsides? Would you not stop pursuing her like a car stopping
because it ran out of petrol? If you are moved by sensation to love, then when sensation goes, love goes. Therefore, this is not the kind of love that can truly move mountains – only true love can be as
strong as the will to live on which it derives. But this kind
of love, powered only by emotions, is weak, as weak as the flesh that powers
it. This love is not true love but an impostor called: erotic love.
Erotic love is
the love that is motivated by the passions. It is a love that is a slave to the
senses. It has only one objective: to satisfy the person – satisfaction that
leads to happiness, happiness that leads to well-being, well-being that leads
to Life. It does so appear on the face of it, that erotic love is the kind of
love that fits well with a philosophy that is centred on Life. But is it? Can a love
that goes against the will to live be not called love? If it can, it would be
absurd. For why, if the purpose of life is to live would one give up his life
for another? Why, would a man shield his loved one from a rampaging gunman to
save her life and not his own? If he loves her in the erotic sense, then is it
not contradictory to put yourself in the face of danger, in harm’s way, ready
to receive not pleasure, but pain, if the purpose of your love is only the
satisfaction of the senses? If you love her in the erotic sense, does it not
make sense that you only love her as long as she satisfies you? And when it
becomes apparent that no satisfaction could be got from this ‘beloved’ then,
does it not make sense to just let her go? But, no. A man is capable of loving
more than the erotic sense, a man is capable of taking the bullets for his
beloved, throwing his life away, and a man is capable of a kind of love that
seems contradictory to a life-centric philosophy of life. A love that is seemingly
absurd. Or is he just being absurd? But, does it need to be absurd? Can it not
make sense that a love that is selfless, is a love that serves life’s cause the
best? It can be, but only if love that is true is an act of recognition.
True love in the animal kingdom: a pair of albatrosses which are paired for life.
True love is an
act of recognition. When you say you love someone, you are recognising her will
to live. To love someone is to want the good for her. To love someone, is to
help her cause to live, in the extent of giving up your own cause to live. You
recognise her daily struggles, her aspirations, and her needs and you make it
your own will to help her. Your purpose in life then becomes to live to help
the beloved live. Yes, and this need not be absurd, because love is an act of
recognition, and what you recognise is that to give up your will and to
compound it with the beloved’s will to live is what helps life’s cause the
best. Life is telling you that the result of such a union of wills would bring
about a will to life that is greater than each of your wills to live. Then Life
would urge that the beloved and the lover’s will to live, if it is mutual,
become one – in marriage: binded by the Will, God's will, and the union of the wills shall be realised by
the fruit of the union, or in other ways that would nevertheless enjoin the
wills. True love then is a kind of love that is purely motivated by Life’s
cause; the cosmic will, absent of sensational motivations, and hence not an
individual living being’s will to live for its own sake. To love in this way is
to love in conjunction with the Universe, and to follow the divine imperative, “you
must love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:31). This is why true love is
far greater than erotic love, because true love serves a divine cause, erotic
love serves only the flesh.
True love is
true, regardless if it is returned. Because true love is a recognition, and the
recognition comes from you. Are you not so assured of yourself that you need
your recognition to be recognised itself by the beloved? Is not your
recognition, your own conviction, enough to be able to love truly? Be assured!
Because it is not you who recognises, it is Life. Life flows in you, and so
does its will. Therefore you should not expect your love to be returned by the
beloved. If you recognise the beloved’s will to live is the one, then that is
enough. Her act of recognition is not within your control. It is up to her
will to decide, because she too has Life, and so she too partakes in the cosmic
will. To stop loving because your love is not returned, is not to love truly but
to love in the erotic sense. Because this is the nature of erotic love, a love
that exists only in gratification, and once it is not gratified, it ceases. If
you write her letters and she doesn’t respond, write still! Because by you
continuing your gesture of love, you continue to care for her and mind her. You
make it known to her that there is someone out there who cares, who is occupied
by the thought of loving her, and though she may not know, there is someone who
believes in her will to live. Only through unrequited love can you truly know
if you truly love someone. Because only an unrequited love does not give
anything in return. In an erotic love relationship, you are motivated by gratification.
In a mutual true love relationship you are loved as you love, so you also
receive gratification. An unrequited love relationship then is the ultimate
test. In it, only Life’s will motivates. It is as if your intention for loving
is stripped of its dress that is sensation – and true love, laid bare for
everyone to see. So that, although unrequited love does not enjoin the wills of
the lovers, it is still an act of recognition by one of the lovers – and thus,
it is still true love that is the work of the cosmic will to live. However,
mutual true love is just as good, even though it is clothed by gratification. But
unrequited love is bare true love – under no condition of gratification. Love then unconditionally, so that you may
love truly.
