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A phrase that moves in and out of popularity over the years is "unconditional love." The phrase should be referred to the department of redundant language department. The alternative to unconditional love is what? Conditional love. That isn't love. "I'll love or continue to love you if....." is a statement of manipulation.
Love is a state of being rather than a state of doing or having. If one accepts that as true, then love doesn't promise anything in the doing or having domains. It doesn't mean sex, pair-bonding relationship, marriage or anything else. In fact, the doing and having can change without affecting love. This includes ending romantic relationships, for instance.
Let the discussion begin.....
Love is a state of being rather than a state of doing or having. If one accepts that as true, then love doesn't promise anything in the doing or having domains. It doesn't mean sex, pair-bonding relationship, marriage or anything else. In fact, the doing and having can change without affecting love. This includes ending romantic relationships, for instance.
Let the discussion begin.....
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Maybe for me, it's the word "love" I have a problem with here. For instance, I feel confident in saying that I will *always* love my munchkins. Will I always love them in the same way, or with the same intensity? I doubt it. Is my love for them separate from my respect for them as people, and would it disappear if they turned out to be genuinely bad people when they grow up? I honestly don't know. I will always love them, but will I love them in the way I love strangers, or...?
Must ponder.
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That being said, what does it take to kill love?
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I don't know if I believe in love ceasing, at all, what that matters. Changing, yes. Perhaps even growing or shrinking, to a point, can be supported by my experience. But cease? Even the former "friends" I despise of the most, I end up defending. Perhaps because there's still some of the love between friends, there.
I don't believe in defining love. Simply do not think it is defineable. That's just my .02 of whatever currency the public sees fit.
-Alexandra
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Defending the once befriended is in the domain of doing. It might or might not be an expression of love. It isn't possible for an observer to tell what the motive is.
It is true, I think, that love calls us to action in that any way that we are being calls us into actions that fit.
Another thought about unconditional love: if love is directed/caused by something or someone such that that person's welfare is placed at greater importance than another's, is that unconditional love?
So what does unconditional love call on us to do? How are we going to behave when we feel love unconditionally?
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I say "unconditional" love is not the opposite of something "conditional" love. Eh. Bad example that perhaps sorta gets my point across a little, person A has principles, and is very much in love with person B. If the case is now "unconditional" love, A may well put all or most of those principles aside for B. If not, I don't know... Bad example. Well, if not, lessay A wouldn't put his principles aside, but try to compromise, and hopefully B would respect those principles...
I should not try to explain my mind half past ten at night.
-Alexandra
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And it matters on what you consider being in love, too.
-Alexandra
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It is the "happily ever after" that gets killed and we call that the end of love.
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*and* I would go so far as to say that love is a state of being, EVEN IF IT HAS NO OBJECT.
Ever wander down the road and feel LOVE!!? I have. I think when that happens my first instinct is to PLACE it -- God loves me! I love myself! I love sunshine! I love the world! I love my SO!
But the mold never QUITE fits -- I just LOVE. A holy experience, to be sure.
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When I attach that feeling to something or someone, I immediately and without thought create a picture of what should happen about the love. This results in some pleasure, some frustration, some anger, some hurt and, in the end, major disappointment.
But it isn't about love at that point for me. It becomes all about unmet expectations!
I can remember thinking when one or another relationship ended, "I will never love again. Love just hurts to much." Now, I think that's a crock of crap sold to me by the previous generation and that I have sold to the next.
I have never, ever felt more alive and complete that when I feel love that isn't attached to anything. Not to people, things or dieties. Just a chest bursting feeling of love for everything without expectation or desire. It just is. I have felt like one with the universe.
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I could use a good virgin. Actually, someone good at playing a virgin would be better.
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More sticks on the fire
Do they have anything to do with one another? If so, what is the relationship between them?
If love is, by definition, unconditional, are the the conditions attached to the love modifiers such as romantic love, sibling, parental love and so forth.
Do the modifiers change the nature of the love or just alther the behaviors and concepts associated with the "do" and "have" domains?
Another way to approach that question might be this. Is it the story we make up about the differences in types of love responsible for the way we do/show love?
Yet another discussion point
Often people have attributed that flashing image of uncondional love, called it devine and created a religion to explain it.
I think the notion of devine love exists because people don't know how to generate that feeling on their own or don't believe they can.
(Maaybe next, I'll add politics or economics to the love discussion. ;)
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and how people act has a heck of a lot to do with me loving them, though it's not a simple equation, and it's not at all about manipulation, because shit, i don't usually tell people that and why i don't love them, and i don't tell them i'd love them if they only did X, because that's not how it goes.
if somebody tried to kill me, or willfully abuse me, i'd stop loving zir -- i know that, because i once loved my mother but stopped some time after being an impressionable child, and i once loved god, and when i stopped believing that love went away.
as to what state it is -- for me love is both a state of being (i can love something/someone without any return whatsoever), and a state of doing (if i love somebody i want to behave in a way that zie understands as loving).
"being in love" is not the same as "loving" for me. being in love is that infatuation thing, disney chemical poisoning, a strong and somewhat longer-term crush. it's much more blind than my love is (my love isn't particularly blind at all), and it's more about what i want to see, than what is actually there. i am very careful when i am in love because it's not a trustworthy emotion, albeit somewhat enjoyable (only somewhat because it also tends to bring with it a rollercoaster effect which i don't particularly appreciate).
-piranha
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At other times, I'm a chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven. People fight over me!
Lynn
Pondering the Nature of Love
My first instinct was to jump and say YES! . . . even the people who have hurt me the most, the people I can never see again or be near because of how much destruction occured in the past . . . I still love them. Sometimes I get really angry that I still love those people, but I do. Part of the forgiveness process for me is realizing, "Yep, they're still human, still living, still a part of the Universe, and I still love them."
I look at all the love I have for others in general, for everything, and then the bond from the past, the relationship only strengthens it.
I have often said that love never dies, that it can be changed, and it can be beaten down. But perhaps it was instead the relationship. The relationship changed. The form of it. The titles and labels and expectations. They changed. Dreams were crushed. Feelings were hurt. Words may have been said . . . or worse. Still, the love is there, even if the walls and blocks of anger, fear, frustration, confusion, disillusionment, et al are in the way . . . love is the muddled and muddied undercurrent beneath the muck.
Isn't love grand? ::wry smile::
Ah, but I'm in a good mood, and would rather think of the really *good* love stories I have . . .
as for being "in-love" . . . perhaps the infatuation of someone new, the falling, passionate romance of exploring someone new allows us to open up those love channels and test the waters of another person's energy . . . there are still walls, still baggage, but with a bit of curiosity and a few risks taken, we're able to experience the joys of that growing, loving bond.
Hm. Yes, life is good. Love *is* grand, and as I look at these beautiful heaps of wilting flowers, I think "There's love. Right there." It's in the pollen falling to the carpet, the petals about to fall . . . in the last dying exhalation of each one of the leaves. Hm.