50 questions
50 questions |
Love, what is It?
|
Isn’t love what we all desire? How could we live without loving and being loved?
Among the
different expressions of love are friendship, dedication to a cause or to a
person, the love of parents for their children, the exclusive love between a
man and a woman united in marriage and the love with which we yearn for the
Absolute.
In order to
find the truth about love between a man and a woman, the first question is:
what is it in a person, that causes me to be attracted towards him or her?
Is it what he/she is able to give me (money, social status)?
Is it the beauty that I see in him or her or the pleasure that I experience
or that we are able to share together?
Is it the feelings I have because of his/her attention?
A relationship thus founded may feel good, but it will prove to be imperfect: the other person is reduced to a means for achieving my own good. Paradoxically, it is towards myself that I am turning...
If we
love truly, we love the other for themselves. An authentic love is above
all to desire the happiness of the other. I do not love him/her only because
of what they can give me but I love him/her primarily because of who he/she
is. In such a relationship, there is even more reason for two people to feel
strongly for one another, to experience pleasure in each other’s company or
to be of mutual service to one another. A profound relationship is rooted in
the person himself/herself over and above their apparent qualities or faults.
To love in
this way implies a free choice on my part : to decide to love the other,
to commit myself to him or her. We are not able to love truly without giving
some of our freedom to the other. And we expect that this choice will be reciprocated
because this is the condition of a relationship.So to look for the happiness
of the one I love is to contribute to my own happiness. Certainly, this isn’t
always easy. We are all susceptible to mood swings, to the monotony of daily
living, to difficulties that may arise and to our own egoism. Love isfragile....Will
I love this person in five or in twenty years? Will I be capable of bearing
with this or that fault? Is this love for life? Will it last through difficulties,
through sickness?
In reality,
if our relationship is founded on a free and reciprocated choice, it can only
grow. Because love doesn’t happen only once. ‘Love at first sight’, exciting
as it is, is in fact a very strong emotion that does not necessarily demonstrate
a profound love.
Such love
is a personal relationship. It is built and it deepens with time and with a
more and more solid trust between each other. By talking and sharing, love is
renewed each day by means of gestures and attitudes that show to the other the
priviledged place he or she has in my life. And the joys, the events and also
the difficulties we live together reinforce our intimacy. This can grow to the
extent that we work at our committment and through the difficulties, keep turning
towards the other.
Love is therefore
not just a simple union of two people but a mutual gift of two free beings of
all that they are: body, heart and spirit. The logic of love is to aspire towards
a total and definitive gift. Only a decision that is reciprocal and for life
allows a human love to reach a certain perfection and to be capable of satisfying
our hearts.
For the Christian,
the source and the model of love is God: Beloved, let us love one another;
for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. (1 John
4:7) 
| Personal Experience
When I was twelve my adolescence hit me like a tidal wave. I was hit by new and incredibly intense feelings inside me: sexual desire, the search for my identity as seen by others, the need to look grown-up, etc. While at a youth camp, I was also confronted for the first time by things like boy-girl relationships and pornography which I hadn’t met before in my family,which was very reserved. This mixture of feelings completely split me apart. I started to call Good what up till then had seemed Bad and with my values completely upside-down, I began experimenting with all sorts of different sexual relationships. I dropped out of my studies, betrayed my parent’s trust and tried out drugs and alcohol. I lived by two principles : One - the more you experience, the more interesting life is, and two - You can have it all, now. It was an experience which turned out really badly that put an end to all my crazy behaviour. I had gone out to enjoy myself and found myself faced with a gang of males who were deadly serious about abusing one more worthless female. That was my first taste of being broken and of real disgust with myself and with others. The next phase, starting when I was sixteen, consisted of searching more and more deeply for love, but only in a certain direction. My aim was to be loved and I did everything to achieve it. I wanted to love too, but in doing so I very quickly got myself trapped by the mix of feelings of friendship and attraction, and I still wanted to have it all now and nothing tomorrow. The bottom line was everything in my life was in ruins and all I had left were memories of broken friendships, of love turned sour and wonderful principles that just didn’t hold up. Breakdown number two, my second crossing the desert: a desert without God, because I didn’t feel concerned at all by the question of God, spirituality, or any kind of metaphysical doubt. It was a book put back on the shelf before I had even bothered to open it. All the same, deep inside, I had always had a great desire to love and be loved deeply, totally and for ever. But what was I doing about it? And what could I do? |