Percy, my favourite colleague at Alwareness says that love is an energy, an connecting force, the basis, the source of life.
I find it difficult to wholeheartedly agree with this romantic and in my eyes unhelpful glorification of a certainly profound and univeral human experience although there are probably many more who would agree with this definition than not.
For me love is one of the most misused words and ideas.
Love is used by people as an excuse to have sex with the partner of their (best) friend, love is the word that people use to hit their partner or children and it is definitely heard by women in the sex industries often by the ones pimping them.
All you need is love? Absolutely not.
You can hate me if you are prepared to offer a warm meal, a roof, an occasional conversation, some contact. Love is really not necessary except for babies in the first few weeks of life – and what passes for love even for very small babies can be clearly abuse in far too many cases.
Once they’ve got passed that crucial first stage so many other things become way more important
Do you really love your children if you don’t understand that sweets and refined sugar you are feeding them is increasingly described/defined as (an addictive) poison?
In Dutch they say ‘love works through the stomach’
in English it’s ‘The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach’.
When I read and see what is served so often in the NL particularly as the ‘childs menu’ my interpretation at best is that it is little short of abuse.
Is it love when men seem to only want women who are always hungry so that they can be ‘beautiful’. Women who damage their ankles, knees, hips and back through continued wearing of high heels Women who don’t even recognise that they are in pain because ‘no pain, no gain’ in the beauty stakes.
I have been intrigued by the use (again in the NL) by the term to put the ‘cloak of love’ over something. Which means that instead of being open, honest and seeking a creative solution for an issue which yes may mean being open to the fact that finding ways to come together as humans in our humanity can be emotionally painful.
The way advocated in this society is to bury it and pretend that that is a loving thing to do. But in a society where pain is a daily if not hourly occurrence in so many other way why is this way not allowed?
Seven different kinds of love have been identified and yet still we have only one word in so many European languages to describe them. Why so few or do we really believe that they are all the same?
I remember picking up my friends 4 year old daughter from play group. When she saw me she said “I love you” it felt great. It felt a little less great but made me laugh so much when within the space of 10 minutes she used the same word and inflection about the other children in her play group, a building, her father and then me again.
How come we have no expressions to give children to differentiate that uprise of positive feeling and passion?
I don’t want any more people in this world who ‘love their country’ it makes them prepared to murder other people for something that doesn’t really exist. In general love seems to be one of the biggest excuses for far too many murders and other crimes. Like when people say they love someone so they will sign a slave contract with them to become each other’s legal possession, often known a marriage.
When I grew up, in the UK Valentines Day was a day to semi secretly declare your love, desire, passion for someone with an unsigned card. In the U.S it was a time to spend money in the name of love.
Our societies obsession with monogamous, heterosexual relationships is a bit of an illness in my opionon and definitely the foundation of most of our ills. I don’t understand what people think that love is if when so many people insist it is something that can turn to hate. The opposite of love is indifference.
Real love does not become hate.
Hate is the result of angry disappointment, frustration, resentment, revenge, projection and a refusal to take responsibility for the reality of oneself and ones feelings and/or (those of) the other. It is impossible to want to harm someone who has awakened the feeling within of love within you.
People decide, mistake, confuse, a lot of things with love, you can see it when women deny fathers who wish it access to their children or when men who wished to be fathers abandon their biological children, some even create better relationships with another’s man children when they do it.
Love can lead to disappointment, pain, rage but none of these need to lead to hate.
You can definitely (want to) avoid and/or ignore an ex to protect your own feelings. When you carry out hateful actions – though I have to be honest and say that I do understand the destruction of material things in expressions of rage, hateful to me is doing something to a person – we are not our property!
When my daughter’s father didn’t want any contact with me, it hurt. But in all honesty I knew exactly why he felt that way. Even when he had a partner who was really mean and vicious also to my daughter I could only wish him the best (including a nicer partner, which he has now).
The scumbag liars who stole from me, the one who hit me and all the other frogs who I thought I loved or was indeed in love with these are the relationships that taught me what love is not and that the only way to achieve it is when it it mutual and one truly respects and accepts oneself.
These are the relationships that made it ultra clear that we are in a really dangerous and damaged place with this societies insistence on equating an ability to.maintain a monogamous relationship with some kind of positive, personal achievement yet it is based on a foundation of sexualising girls, vilifying women and emotionally crippling men and boys.
We need to take another look at our perceptions of what love is.
We have to take a step back from the poison we are being fed as we are romanticised onto the path of true love. Look at the underlying messages in all the great romances we are fed. One of both of them always dies.
Look how much time, money, human energy both positive and negative and especially planetary resources are wasted on the whole game.
The universal law of life is cause and effect. What goes around comes around. By being constantly aware of this we can ensure that what comes our way in terms of love and every other aspect of our lives is fantastic.
The Seven Types of Love:
Eros is sexual, passionate, or romantic love. A form of madness brought about by being pierced with an arrow. The arrow breaches us and is a fundamentally blind process of striving for survival and reproduction.
Philia, is shared goodwill or friendship. It is believed that good will towards another is based upon one finding the other of use, pleasant and/or good, this is associated with mutual benefit, companionship, dependability and trust.
Storge is the love between parents and their children,familial love. A fondness born of familiarity or dependency that rises above personal qualities.
Agape is an unselfish concern for the welfare of others or universal love. It helps to build and maintain, sustains and enriches us on psychological, social and environmental levels.
Ludus is playful or uncommitted love. Involving activities like flirting, seducing, teasing and dancing. The focus is on fun, sometimes on conquest, but with with no strings attached. A Ludus relationship is casual, undemanding, uncomplicated yet, can still be long-lasting.
Pragma is a practical love founded on reason, duty and/ or longer-term interests. Sexual attraction is on the back seat. Personal qualities, compatibility, shared goals, and making it work are foremost. Pragma can work well with ludus.
Philautia is self-love, healthy or unhealthy. Unhealthy self-love is akin to hubris which (leads to destruction, or nemesis.) usually means an inflated sense of one’s status, abilities,or accomplishments, especially when accompanied by haughtiness or arrogance. Hubris promotes injustice, conflict and enmity.
Healthy self-love is having self-esteem;
A cognitive and emotional appraisal of our own worth relative to that of others, a matrix through which we think, feel, and act, that reflects and determines our relation to ourselves, to others, and to the world.
Self-esteem and self-confidence do not always go hand in hand. It is possible to be highly self-confident and yet to have profoundly low self-esteem, as is the case with many performers and celebrities.
People with high self-esteem can invest themselves completely in projects and people
They refuse to allow fear of failure or rejection to determine their course of action. They suffer hurt and disappointment, but setbacks neither damage nor diminish them. With this resilience, one is open to growth in experiences and relationships, tolerant of risk, quick to joy and delight, accepting and forgiving of oneself and others.
The seven types of love seep into and pass through one another.
With a small adjustment Plato said that; love aims at beautiful and good things, because the experience and enjoyment of these is happiness.
The best, most beautiful, most dependable of beautiful and good things are truth and wisdom, therefore Plato named love a philosopher:
Heli St Luce aka Maxi MC Naughty
