Since I know myself, I see that love is something that always touches me. This is a value that I respect, and I always think about it. So, I plan to talk about this strange thing, called Love, in this little article. And, I hope you enjoy reading it, and get little of inspiration throughout those words.
Firstly, what is love? I like to think love is a feeling that connects us all. Love isn’t a thing that simply easy comes, naturally. And, everyone want it. Some live the whole life searching for it…
What it is so special in Love, that people want it so strongly? Maybe it’s the needing of connection….
But, love wasn’t always the same. Not so much earlier, those connections were only about position in society, money, peace agreement, everything except the feeling. This freedom of the feeling, the freedom to love anyone you want to, and marry someone because you love this person, is a really new concept.
That’s why urges to explore more about it. Love is art. It doesn’t come without any effort. Love is something that we need to learn, and improve in our daily life. We need to work on that, and think about that. Because, at the same way, hate and separation is easy learned. Mainly, with our children.
So, I decided to read a little bit. AND - I was really enchanted reading books like “Love” from Leo Buscaglia, “Art of love” from Erich Fromm and “The forms of sensibility” from Emilio Romero. They are really nice books. The first two books are two sweet jewels, which anyone can enjoy and take many cute words about love.
They show a vision about love connected with freedom, giving without wanting something back, to be opened to love and learning to be loving. Those concepts are nice and valuable. And I tried to be and live like that.
The third one, I read in my University some part, and it’s also an amazing book. He does a phenomenological study about feeling and it clarifies a lot about that. He shows the differences about love, passion, humor and so on. Simply fantastic!
With that, I found out that are different kinds of love. That one directed to ourselves. That one for our families. That one for our friends. And finally, the couple love. I also found out that, for me, the love of couple is a really nice one, and that I wanna pay the effort to that.
Our family is our family, they are there, and for the most of us, with a unconditionally love. With friends, it’s a more light one, only sometimes there is a hang out or talking. But, with couple the thing changes a lot, because it’s a daily connection, you face yourself in a really close way, it’s bringing someone from outside in a really intimate circle - even more than friends or family, it’s a daily decision to be with that person and make his/her day-by-day lighter and happier, even if you really don’t need to. In this sense, Edgar Morin points out that that’s the difference between possessivity and oblativity in love.
After that, I read other books and writers that made a huge impact - mainly Zygmunt Bauman. As a huge fan of philosophy, I read some of the texts and books from this author and it was delicious. Bauman is a post-modern thinker that sees our society now as a liquid one. Now, things a more likely to be like water, fluid. So, nowadays things, people and relations tends to pass through our fingers and don’t last long.
Some examples - before art was made to last a long time throughout centuries, now art are more like quick flashes during time; before famous people remained famous years and years, now almost anyone can become famous in a blink and lose it as well.
So, about relations and love this couldn’t be different. In this liquid post-modern point of view this is also liquid, that means people tend to relate with other persons like it could turned on and off. It easily and quickly changes, like there is nothing to rely on.
At some point, Bauman made a line of thinking that really had surprised me. Our society now is too focused on our “self”, we are always worried about us, our happiness, our life. It sound like me, me, me all the time - never US, the other. We can’t stand being unhappy, even for a second.
That really touched me at the time. That had clarified a lot about how love works in our society now, and also how bad it is. Because, even with a mask of an appearing enlightenment in those quotes like: “Show love, without waiting something in return/ You should be strong and understand all kind of acting, even if it hurts you/ you should look more about yourself, for you to be strong enough to give love and without ego… and so on” you must say now - It’s totally non-sense!
Love is about giving AND receiving, love is reciprocal! You shouldn’t sacrifice yourself in love, and we shouldn’t accept anything that comes to us or any action. Love should be light, peaceful, emotional mature, mutual learning! It is about to stick up and growing together.
I think Bauman said all that because he is a little conservationist. But, anyway we must think about that, because it isn’t healthy the way it is. We don’t need to go back as it were before, but we should create new ways and manners of relationing. Humans are social beings, we need to take care each other, we need to train our attention to those on our side and get out our umbilical focusing, we need each other in order to grow up and develop as a society. Said all that, let yourself be embraced by love! Let’s be more empathic, more loving, more helping! Creating a better world now!
