2003-11-19 - 1:53 p.m. Love 10 Love 10 Where does love begin? I have asked myself that on several occasions. Where is the beginning of love? Is it when someone does something nice to you? Is it the way someone looks? What starts love? Perhaps that isn�t the place to start when looking at love. Maybe to understand what love is, we should look at how it ends? In life, I think it�s important to see how things begin and end. And then after discovering the �how��we will uncover the �why�. Love ends in hate, almost always. Every time love ends, hate is right there with it. Divorced couples hate something so much love can�t exist. Friends get so angry over something that they can no longer be friends. And even parents sometimes grow so spiteful, that they will kill their own children out of jealousy or anger. Hate is the end of love. But where does love begin? It begins as a dream. Love is an emotion that we all want to feel at some point. Every human feels an internal quest to find this �love� in their life, and they seek it in any way possible. They want a perfect love, with the perfect wife, or the perfect husband, or the perfect life. But dreams are just shadows�and as we grow into love, the shadows start disappearing. Maybe love IS fiction. We make concessions. We �accept� things that weren�t in our dreams. Things that were never in our perfect vision of the love we once desired. The man of your dreams may not have EVERYTHING you wanted, but you can put up with him leaving the seat up. Not picking up after himself. Cheating on your once�maybe twice. The original fictional love --the perfect love-- changes. It changes into a more �realistic� level of love that exists with stipulations and the definition of that love changes every so often to accommodates mistakes and blunders. �You are just human: Everyone makes mistakes� Sometimes the rules can�t be changed, and what ever occurred extinguishes the last flame of �realistic� love was too against the �idea� of the original feeling of �perfect love--. Shockingly, when the fire of love goes out is when hate is ignited. But the question remains� why do we accept �realistic� love, when we truly seek perfect love? Some humans may say that they have a �perfect� love. I do not believe them. Perfect love does not allow for hard times in relationships that everyone has. The perfect man would never think about other woman. The perfect woman would never prefer shopping to sex. But there are those cases. Everyone exists in reality and at some point thought twice about the person they are with. So we understand that perfect love is what we seek. That is, to me, the initial feeling you get when you look at someone else and they are attractive, witty, and most of all someone who exceeds your own expectations. Even for a moment� But humans were built to doubt, and perfection doesn�t last long. Because of our doubt we are left with �realistic love.� And though couples say that they are �in love� often times I doubt this is true. Love is a very short term feeling. It�s not like you run around all day feeling that sensation of a first kiss, or the titillation of holding your sweeties hand for the first time. No No.. Couples are often just two people who have that feeling more often than normal, but never all the time. Often they are together because of how wonderful moments in their life have been. But when they are apart, at work, just riding the train, or perhaps in bed with someone else; often they aren�t in love. That isn�t to say they don�t care for one another, but just that the amazing feeling of love does not persist. And the fact that we live in a liner world coupled with the fact the love does not persist, is the reason perfect love does not exist. There are so many ways to love. People can love their pets, their family, their car, their spouse, a piece of music, an idea, or maybe just a sound that someone makes. How can we possibly expect love to persist? What is true love? Is it between a man and a woman? A man and a man? A person and an animal? A professor and an idea? A mother and a child? Are any of these things really love? Could it be that maybe love is a developed sense? We need love to motivate us? Could love be an evolutionary design? If we love someone, we stay together and breed children. If we love our child we protect them and nurture them. If we love an idea we strive to perfect that idea, to discover more about it, and then ultimately master it. If we cherish an object we own, we often protect it. Like our home. We do not wish to be without shelter so we often love our house, and ensure that it will never go away. Animals love us to endear themselves to us. Dogs in particular. Cats could make it without us, but dogs need us and thus are more loving. This trait has been successful, and evolutionarily that�s why dogs love. Is it the same for people? Do we love, not out of our conscious desire to, but out of some evolutionary base? Does that cheapen love? Or does it give love more of a purpose? I think it might allow some understanding as to why we love, and why humans act the way they do. Could it be possible that love is just like our need to drink and eat? Is it not a conscious decision, but an innate need that we have? Is loving like breathing? Did we develop love so that we could have compassion? A compassion that prevents us from wanting to harm others. Compassions to care for the hurt, and a desire to improve humanity with our actions. Is love what creates our need to better ourselves? Is it truly what has progressed human culture? And what if love is a human trait? If our realistic love is an evolutionary tool that we have developed to have a better society, then what is perfect love? Could that be our insides desire to discover perfection; to progress ourselves to better understanding? This abstract feeling and desire we have inside us could actually be our nature calling us to keep breeding, keep protecting, keep building, continue helping, and striving forward in our evolution. Why do we seek perfection? Why do we always advance? Why can humanity never cease improving itself? Is this need for perfect love something greater? Maybe, this perfect love could be God� | |||||||||||
