Wednesday, September 16, 2009

So.... is love:
Falling in love with a person or
Falling in love with the idea of falling in love?

12 comments:

  1. I think its the idea of being loved, that drives you to love someone. Like if you tried out this new dish at the restaurant, and if you loved it, there is a tendency to make someone like that too... and you would go ahead by recommending, tweeting etc. If that dish could talk it would love you the most because of that (Of course it gets eaten n all... but thats a different topic :)

    Love is like that, but a little more obvious and strangely a lot more subtle. When you love someone you are giving them the sign of approval and unknowingly recommending them to everyone you know (or care about). They then complete the cycle by loving you back, which felt nice because someone did it to them :)

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  2. Makes sense... another question... u think love could be unconditional?
    In your words... Is it possible to love a dish when u don't get to eat it? I mean.. without expecting anything, any form of acknowledgment in return to the love you show, is it possible to love?

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  3. Wow..I think I can answer that and the answer is YES, love could be unconditional. In fact, I would certify love as love only when it is unconditional (not expecting anything in return). If it changes with the changes in behavior/characteristics of the person/thing that u love, then its not love at al, it is just liking.. a liking towards the qualities of that person/thing.. showing u love in return is also a quality :) that u like.

    Sometimes, u might not love what you like and surprisingly it holds good the other way round too. I'll give you examples, I might not love the person that I have this huge crush on, though I like every quality about that person, even if he comes and says he loves me (i'll get 100% acknowledgement if i love this guy) but i still wouldnt love him.. Love is something that just happens to u..It is more emotional than logical..I have this friend of mine whom I really love, and there are some major things about her that I dont like at all, she's married now, and she doesnt even call me as often as before, infact I believe she does so only when she needs me for something, there is not much of reciprocation from her end for my love for her. but I still love her..very truly.

    To me love is something like a strong inner feeling as if u own that person/thing. Mmmm.. another example.. it is what you would have for somthing you created, or something that belongs to you..like a mud pot that u made, or a memorable picture that u have, no matter how ugly u look in the picture, n u might not even like the way the pot came out.. u would still love those things.. Its the same feeling a mother would have for her child. her love is not conditional, it is not based on the acknowledgement she gets from the child for her love.. So yes, unconditional love exits.

    And I feel lucky for having people I love unconditionally in my life and also for having those who love me so. (The former and the latter set of people are different here.. surprising, but thats how it is.)

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  4. hmmm when u say that 'love is a feeling where u own that thing/person' doesn't it mean that you are being selfish there? u love something because it is urs. If its not urs, u would not love it as much. And even after 10 yrs, if ur love doesn't get acknowledged, will u still love the person? Is it humanly possible to be that selfless?

    "might not love the person .....but i still wouldnt love him.." - I agree with this.

    And yes, love is something which just happens, suddenly..

    So.. another question - you think best friends can be lovers?

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  5. I would have to disagree there. I think love is extremely conditional, and is the sole reason that it works so brilliantly. When you say you love someone unconditionally, you are basically saying I will love you whether you are good or bad. But when you declare that, you are also silently declaring in small print that the badness is OK as long as its tolerable to yourself.

    For example you find your unconditionally loved partner lied to you. You can understand.. you've done the same to others too. Its ok. He's cheated on you. But you love him soo much you you think of the future without them and its all forgiven and forgotten. Later he turns out to be a child rapist whose also killed a dozen children and ate them for dinner. Ummm... unconditional love et all, but you draw the line there won't you? You do that because you came to the relationship with certain unspoken "condition" and all of them will have a certain threshold... and your opinion about someone is something that's constantly evolving and changing based on what you see/hear/feel... and its not something you can control. Most people block themselves from thinking and forming such a dynamic opinion on the fly about someone by quickly jumping back to what it once was like. Its not very different than a cat drinking the milk with the eyes closed, thinking no one will see it :) The longer this goes on, the worse it gets...

    I believe when you love someone with conditions you are giving respect and credibility to both yourself and your partner. Look at it this way... would you like someone to love you unconditionally or for the values you posses? If its unconditionally, then its like admitting you are drawn to people who are scared of having a preference and opinion. If its for your values, then that itself is the condition... "so long as you posses those values, thou shall be loved" :)

    Hope it makes sense... in your case with the friend of your, i'm guessing "keeping in touch" was simply not a condition that you had :)

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  6. Yes Sony. I agree with you. I would never be able to accept someone who loves me unconditionally. It simply means that the same person can love anybody else at anytime. I just got to him first. I ll never be fully satisfied with that. Over the years, a little of my own, a little from the world -- I have a collection of things in me which are unique and lovable (not by all ofcourse!). So when a person identifies those qualities in me and loves me for what I am,I will be left with no option but to love :) I think unconditional love is what I can partially relate to the love my parents ve for me. They never need anything in return. But then again, they loved me when i was born, because I was theirs. And that's their condition. So, those songs and movies and philosophies on unconditional love, which we grew up listening and watching, is all a fabrication of something which was never there?

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  7. Yup... I think best friends make the best lovers indeed.... provided both of you are open minded to admit it. I don't think love is an intense and mysterious fantasy like floating thingy that's completely different from "just a friend". You simply cannot really love someone without first being friends with them. And then like you are giving it a promotion, the friendship becomes love.

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  8. yup... its all fabrication. Parents love their children on the condition that they are theirs (or they would love all children alike!). Unconditional love is a myth that was brought to accommodate all the garbage characteristics in someone. On close inspection, it crumbles away because it fails logically.

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  9. Whoa!.. let me see if I can address all that booing at me here.. love needs a basis to start.. whether its ur parents' love/ur love towards ur partner who loves u back/towards someone who doesn't acknowledge to ur love/towards ur friend who loves u as a friend/towards ur idol who doesnt even know u,etc. Love doesn't start out of nowhere.. it starts out of an emotional reason, it could be different for different people, now how strong that emotion is or how much you value it is what determines how unconditional ur love is going to be towards that person.. u guys are simply calling that reason a condition, but I like to call it an emotion.. if my parents suddenly come to know that I am not their daughter, they wont stop loving me.. so, their love is still unconditional –though I’m not their own child which in ur words is the condition that made them love me so far.. the condition is not satisfied anymore, and they would still love me.

    'Condition' -- when they talk about unconditional love, they are referring to the conditions u come across once u already started to love a person for whatever emotional reasons.. falling in love is not an instant thing.. it takes different time periods for diff people (if my parents were told the truth the very next day after I was born, they might have left me).. but once u r in love, I can say it is quite possible that ur liking might fade off if ur loved ones show characteristics that you dont really like.. but the emotional attachment that u have for them(which might not be mutual again) might not ever completely fade off depending on how strongly u built it for urself.. Again, I don’t care what u wanna do about that nagging love, u might as well wanna ignore it coz the person doesn’t deserve to be shown that love anymore. But, if u choose to ignore his behavior and continue to do what u were doing, only then its called unconditional love? NO. In either cases, the love did exist. Only the choice u made about what u wanna do with it differed.

    Coming to ur other question Somz, 'love is a feeling where u own that thing/person'? No, I said its a feeling AS IF u own it/him/her ..u need not even tell that person that u love them, leave alone them being practically urs.. u love them for ur own reasons, u keep them very close to ur heart, thats what i meant by saying 'as if they r urs' (couldnt express it any better.. forgive my poor vocab  )..n only u would know if that is unconditional love or just a liking for their qualities.. n what you wanna do about that love u have for that person, or about a similar love somebody else has for u.. that is up to u.. I wouldnt wanna tell my guy that I love him unconditionally, it would be like welcoming him to walk all over me which I wouldn’t like.. u do what U like to do with ur love.

    Coming to Sony's views..
    "your opinion about someone is something that's constantly evolving and changing based on what you see/hear/feel... and its not something you can control" thats a great point.
    You are saying the person I loved ended up being a rapist and ate children, now I hate him and hence my love for him was conditional.. which is perfect.. I would like to see him hanged.. but what if his mom still prays for his well being and still loves him?.. she need not support him in his deeds, she even feels sorry for having such a son.. but she might be still loving him. If that extreme can exist, this extreme also would.

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  10. But lets not get into extremes.. What I am saying is.. yes, love has a few reasons why it even started, but when u love somebody, u wouldnt have an exhaustive checklist of reasons/conditions that u like that person for.. to double check his/her future behavior against. Even if u made one with the limited things that u know about that person at that time, n if u made one with the list of things that u hate to see him doing.. I bet there would be multiple instances where he did things from the second list.. and sometimes didnt do things from the first list.. and u did whatever u wanted to do about that.. but u still continued loving him.. so at that point, your love was indeed unconditional. So, it DOES exist. Whether it is one condition or many conditions, whether it is a minor condition or a major condition, u did choose to forgive a few. It is like how u want to look at a glass that's half full. Or when we say we got to draw the line beyond a point, who says it doesn't apply here.. u did let certain conditions go.. like lying and cheating, n u wanna ensure that the conditions u wanna let go shouldnt cross the line.. which is perfect. And, sowmya wants to draw the line right there where that person doesn't acknowledge to her love in any manner. Are there people who can love somebody beyond those lines? Yes, there are. Who said love cant be measured? The point where u drew the line can be farther than the point where somebody else did and vice versa. It depends on the amount of ur emotional attachment and your preferences in life.

    Her question was "without expecting anything, any form of acknowledgment in return to the love you show, is it possible to love?". And my answer is YES. I don’t care what u wana do with that love u have though.. continue expressing it, or just keep it to urself and love that feeling, or ignore it and not waste time thinking about it.. But its pretty much possible that it exists.

    Sorry about the length of my posts.. Its just going on n on.. I’m new to blogging.. I’ll try to keep it short from next time :D

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  11. hmmmm... you did raise some interesting points there... but I wanna start off with a very fundamental question. What's YOUR opinion of that mother who still loves his rapist child eating son? I really don't believe in a default answer like all mothers love their children etc etc. I wanna know what YOU think of that mother... do you agree with her... doing the right thing etc. By the way, its not nature or instinct or anything like that... Pre World War German mothers saw their babies as weak stinky ugly things that made noise when you pinch or hit it (im not kidding!). Love for someone is always accompanied with a reason (which you call it emotion). So disregarding all preconceived notions of "Mother's love" and all that, I'll give my opinion of that mother. I think the mother who loves her rapist son is doing what I mentioned in my earlier post... ie blocking the formation of a new opinion of her son and reinforcing the idea of how he used to be... by over-flooding her memories and emotions with intense moments... like when he was an innocent little boy and all that. That's not unconditional love.... that's simply a mother who cannot tolerate a more truthful and current opinion of her son.

    As humans, we can only value something when we have a positive opinion of it... meaning if we like it. For example I cannot hate the taste of oranges and still claim to like them. Similarly, the mother cannot truly love her son unless she considers his deeds and actions good... according to her own limits. So if she claim to still love her son despite what he has become, she is just kidding herself... probably out of social pressure or baseless conditioning... or plain ol' denial. You can apply this to any relationship... and you will realize that at the core of it, there will always be a condition.

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  12. "I wanna know what YOU think of that mother... do you agree with her... doing the right thing etc." My principle is simple, You can judge a person whether they are right or wrong based on their deeds, not based on their feelings -feelings are totally personal to them.. If out of love she goes and fetches children for him to rape, then she is wrong. If she hands him over to police and tells him he doesnt deserve to live in the society, and still out of love, says silent prayers for him that he should change and that he should be doing ok in the jail, then she is right. We are nobody to judge ones feelings, and love is a feeling.. not a set of actions or words.

    Love can be completely illogical, but what u wanna do with it better be logical.

    "I cannot hate the taste of oranges and still claim to like them". My parents would hate the idea of loving someone else's child like theirs, but they still do love me like their's even after knowing i'm not. Whats the condition here?

    And I might be having a different kind of attachment for those oranges.. may be the orange juice gave me good health.. though I still hated its taste.. n now i figured out that the same juice is affecting my blood sugar real bad coz of a new disease.. but I still like an orange because i fell in love with an emotional reason that it was improving my health.. which it is not doing anymore.. I may even decide not to drink the juice again.. but I still love an orange. Whats the condition here?

    I am looking at simple things like this and saying that unconditional love does exist.. and you are saying that love vanishes when ur loved ones dont meet ur conditions and hence love is conditional.. do u mean they have to satisfy all the conditions u have for u to love them? may be not.. may be u have already forgiven a few. But u wanna cal ur love as conditional, though it was indeed unconditional to some level according to me. Its just how u want to look at a glass that's half full.. Also, there could be somebody who values their emotion more than u do urs and they might have forgiven more conditions than u did.

    Coming back to that mother.. Loving a behavior is different from loving a person. She might have hated him for what he did, and still loved him because she is simply emotionally attached to him.. You are just rephrasing it like this.....
    "that's simply a mother who cannot tolerate a more truthful and current opinion of her son" .. Why do u think she has that difficulty in tolerating the new opinion? If it was somebody else's son, wont it be easier for her to form that opinion? There is difficulty because she is still emotionally attached to him at that point. We are not talking about actions here. It is just about the very feeling. She doesn't have to tell anybody about her emotion or justify or declare her love to anybody.. where is the social pressure even coming into picture here?

    "at the core of every relationship, there will always be a condition" Is it the same condition with which u even started the relationship? May be not. Its already proven that the conditions due to which u even started loving a person need not necessarily be the conditions that they should always satisfy to continue to be loved by u.. If u feel there is some other unspoken condition thats holding the relationship together or sometimes is even the cause for breaking it  , may be yes. To a completely emotional person, there might b no such conditions at all. To a more practical person who knows what she wants, it might be as specific as saying 'i love u' to her everyday. To a more balanced person, it could be just the basic ethical behavior itself which is enough for him to love that person forever. To reframe what I wanted to say, Unconditional love does exist, and at different levels. The emotional guy's love here is more unconditional than the balanced guy's, which is more unconditional than the practical girl's.

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