ON LOVE...IN LOVE...BEING LOVED...

On Love...


Let's put it this way, this is not an attempt to add on, to what the great poets have said on the subject. One can read John Keats, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the rest of the English romantics, to get the feel, on what this thing is all about...or is this a thing or an abstraction..? or an emotion? but emotion is also an abstraction...Nor is this an additional take, on the exposition of Paul (the apostle) on the subject, in his letter to the members of the early church in Corinth. The 13th chapter of this letter is so sublime, it's oft-quoted by those who know or feel, what this thing or abstraction is all about...


Then there's the book by Clive Staples (C.S.) Lewis, "The Four Loves", it is not incidental, because the Greeks have four translations of the word 'love'. He stated the different degrees or levels of love..'Storges'.. Philia' .. 'Eros'.. and 'Agape'... Starting with the plain thing called 'affection' or 'storges' in Greek, the most common, the most ordinary relation, between kins always related with presence or familiarity, then progressing towards the loftier level called 'agape' or caritas in latin, described as unconditional love. To ordinary mortals like us, distinguishing or calibrating this emotion according to such scheme is of no particular concern.

There's a saying that loving doesn't involved the brain, it's a heart thing. Intuatively it is usually understood to mean the emotion involved between two humans of opposite gender. And what about the love of a mother for her son or daughter? Is it less lofty or noble than the love between a man & a woman..? It is of a different category. There's no comparison. If we read the poets they too, don't talk much about a mother's love for her child, mostly they dwell on forlorn love, love lost...& the pain of being jilted, cheated & left alone...

The English romantics doesn't have a monopoly on this. One can read the elegant lyric poetry of the Lebanese Kahlil Gibran, or the quatrains in the poetry of the Persian Omar Khayyam, or the intensity of Pablo Neruda...The pulsating beat of a longing heart could be felt in Gibran's "Broken Wings". One can compare the pulse in Browning's "How do I love Thee" or her "My Heart & I"...Love as these writer's penned is universal in dealing with longing & pain, of incompleteness in the absence of the object of one's love...


In Love...&...Being Loved


This is a state of being in that emotion, or if one might call it an abstraction. One can describe it but he/she can't define it..A feeling of bliss in the presence of the object of one's love or a feeling of extreme loss & disorientation when left alone by the object of one's love. The pain is even amplified when the object of one's attention is seen in the company of another, who has replaced her. Remember the saying "No greater fury can there be, than the fury of a woman spurned.." So many were written about crimes of passion because of love spurned, jilted & lost.

A graphic example of disorientation due to jilted love is the semi bio-film by Trauffaut about the daughter of the famous French writer Victor Hugo. The film "The Story of Adele H." tells the story of one woman's passionate love for a man who doesn't even care she exists. The film ends with Adele's chasing of the man that ends in nothing but emptiness & illness, seemingly an unjust ending which leaves one aghast with a dry throat and eyes welling with tears.

Whoever has not read of Shakespeare's tragedy "Romeo & Juliet"...Almost everyone loves a love story with a happy ending, just like Cinderella when she and her Prince charming, rode on a white horse towards the sunset, that's how Walt Disney imagined it, but it's not always true. Not all love stories have happy endings, Romeo and Juliet ended in tragedy. One can read the story of Samson and Delilah, the love triangle of Guinevere, King Arthur & Launcelot all ending in heartbreak. What about "Love Story" ?, the novel written by Eric Segal. The plot runs like this: Harvard law student Oliver Barrett (Ryan O'Neal in the movie adaptation) falls for Jennifer Cavalieri (Ali MacGraw), a Radcliffe College music student. Oliver's father opposed their relationship, he must finish college, but they went on anyway with their relationship and got married. Oliver got disinherited from his father's will (they're rich) so they started off their married life @ rock bottom (a la Pinoy telenovela), but love finds a way, they managed to stay happy. Tragedy struck when Jennifer was diagnosed with cancer, which eventually took her away from him and Oliver was left alone. Lately, we have "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer, a reformed vampire's (Edward Cullen) love for a mortal (Isabella Swan). The book plus the hit movie catapulted Meyer to celebrity status and so with the actor & actress who played the role of Edward & Isabella. Love's fulfillment always have some obstacles. Some love stories always leave the reader with a gaping mouth & a craving for a happy ending but it would be stretched out for a sequel..there's no happy ending yet.

The longing to be in the state of being 'in love' is universal. It is the constant desire of any ordinary mortal to be in this state and be responded. This is not always the case. Ideally the stroll should be along a two-way esplanade, but there are times when the walk is along a lonely one-way street. At times the walk is along a darkened alley where the stone paving is rough. To be 'in love' is to risk being hurt, but it is always a given & because of the longing to be in that state, the risk is still worth taking... in our midst, the masochists are not a few...
Who doesn't aspire to be loved? It's what the world needs, not only now..The need is timeless and universal. The Burt Bacharach/Hal David song of the 70's still echo today.."What the world needs now is love sweet love, it's the only thing that's just too little of..." but if one has to love, she might not be responded..but the object of such engrossing emotion is the lucky one, though he may not know it. Even if the one being loved doesn't deserved such, the one who loves, doesn't care..as long as she can go on loving..to love for her, is life. To stop loving is to stop breathing...

In the film 'The Gladiator', when Maximus returned home, wounded to get his family back, he found his Love hanging, lifeless..her breath has been taken away...his, has been taken away too.. He was the object of the daughter of the emperor's love but he spurned her. Would life have meaning without love? "He wounded you deeply?" was the usurper's question to his sister. But Maximus statement is even more painful,"Help me, by seeing me no more..." What will happen to the heart that beats but the very reason for its beating is gone..?

Loving is unconditional. If there are conditions to love, it isn't love anymore, it becomes a partnership proposal. To ordinary mortal like us, to truly love entails pain especially if one expects to be loved in return, but to great lovers, to love is always a delight, no matter what. To be loved in return is an ideal but this is not always true..Take Guinevere, for instance, King Arthur loved her. Guinevere's response was to love her in her mind, but her heart is with Launcelot. To love deeply is an act of the will. This is the very reason God commanded us to love Him with all our heart, our mind, our strength and our will (Deut.10:12-13)... The very essence of loving is in the act itself.

In the movie "A Beautiful Mind", John Nash's wife loved him without precondition inspite of the difficulty of loving a brilliant man who lost his mind. In the movie's moving ending, when John Nash received his Nobel Prize for his contribution to mathematical modelling, he dedicated the recognition to his wife. Without his wife's total devotion to him, nobody knows if Dr. John Nash would be able to come back to normal life. This is love, without precondition, beyond explanation.
To love deeply is to be brave, to be always true, to be always prepared for pain, even to the point of being a masochist (if we are to borrow some people's adjective), yes even to the point of death..."perfect love casteth out fear" (1 John 4:18). Some have stopped loving because of the pain reaped while in the act of loving but the joy has also stopped..while the pain reverberates within. When one continues to love, even if unresponded, even the mundane becomes meaningful, and pain goes into oblivion...When one loves, even the darkest of dark spaces, become light and even if in chains, there is complete freedom, for to stop loving means to stop breathing and life becomes mundane & dreary, and life ceases to be what it is...