What is love? Now, some of you are going to immediately think of the song "What is love?" made famous by the movie "A Night at the Roxbury" and the Saturday Night Live skit. Well actually no this essay is not about the great comedic movie staring Will Ferrell and Chris Katan, it is about us human beings ultimate quest for love and companionship. I started to write this essay sometime ago and I have not finished it, I would like to think of it as work in progress. I invite any one reading to post a comment or email me your thoughts.
Love can be a wonderful and probably the greatest emotionally taxing. With all its highs and lows Love take us on the most incredible rollercoaster ride that we humans know. It can be absolutely terrifying and completely exhilarating. Love can be the ultimate in happiness and then the ultimate in sadness. Love can make us better people and it can leads us to do terrible things that we say we do or did out of love. If love is all these things then why do we keep on falling in love even after we have fallen out of love?
Merriam-Webster defines love in the following way:
Love – Noun
1 a (1): strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties |
Love - Verb
1: to hold dear: CHERISH
2 a: to feel a lover's passion, devotion, or tenderness for b (1): CARESS (2): to fondle amorously (3): to copulate with
3: to like or desire actively: take pleasure in <loved to play the violin>
4: to thrive in
Love is both a noun and a verb. The words that mainly describe the meaning of love are; devotion, affection, devotion, attraction, unselfish loyalty, G-d, the act of sex, to desire and it is also the score of zero in tennis. Zero? Is love a Zero sum game?
Where does love come from?
Biblically love comes from G-d. G-d loved and loved man so much that G-d gave man the freewill to worship him and love and be devoted to him in return. That’s amazing! G-d loves us unconditionally but gave us the freewill to love him. Obviously G-d wants us to love him but it is our choice. G-d could have just been satisfied with the Angels who love G-d without any conditions their faith and devotion is unquestioned. But man’s love, devotion and faith are questioned and are constantly questioned. We question everything. How could G-d give us free will to decide our faith? He gave us the free will because G-d wants us to love him on our own accord, sure G-d has given us a blueprint to follow and commandments and mitzvoth as to how worship, devote ourselves and love in return but its up to us to take this blueprint a use it. Obviously, man does not always follow the ways that G-d has set out for us. G-d is like our parents they love us unconditionally, they give us our life, they gives us shelter, they give us education, they give us the lessons of life that are necessary for us to go forward into life and be good contributing people. But in the end it is up to us to do what we feel or see fit with all this love and lessons that G-d and our parents have given us. Even though, G-d and our parents have given us rules for life we can still throw them away and not follow. I would imagine that in someway it is to our benefit to follow these rules and return the love that has been given to us.
Getting back to G-d and his love for mankind. When G-d created Adam, Adam was alone and G-d saw this and it made him sad. G-d knew that Adam should not be alone even though Adam was in the Garden of Eden and could not want from anything. However, the animals, bushes, flowers and all the trees in the Garden could not possibly provide Adam with the comfort and companionship of another human and yes the love of another human. So G-d creates Eve from the flesh of Adam and then Man is no longer alone. What does the creation of Eve do for Adam? It gives him companionship and the ability to love someone else. This is a great and unselfish act by G-d. Now Adam can love someone or something other than G-d. Essentially, G-d gave himself competition? (I am not sure about this explanation myself then again it is my own.)
The questions I have are; is the love between Man and Woman an act of free will? Is Love predetermined? Destined? Fated for us? Why do we fall in love with the people we do? Why do we love them? How did it happen? Does love choose us or do we choose love? The possibilities of love are mind-boggling. How do we/I know when I am in love? Like I wrote earlier, love is an emotionally taxing act that we search for, find, lose, regain and ultimately submit our minds, bodies and souls to.
4 comments:
OK, my only comment is that I - fake Jew that I am - don't look at LOVE from an Adam/Eve perspective at all. So the whole biblical connection I'll leave to all your other peeps that apparently know about this blog. :-)
My only theory on this is that LOVE is not predetermined, and that on some level we do choose who we love. LOVE isn't the first feeling you feel when you meet someone (barring 'love at first sight'...which...yeah, whatever). Love comes over time and after walls have come down and you've let someone in. So in that sense, we do choose who we love b/c we choose who to 'let in'. Then again, my Uncle Paul always tells us that it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich guy as a poor one. Somehow not one of us girl cousins has managed to make that our reality.
As for knowing when you are in love, I'll pass on what my mother told me when I asked her how I'll know it's the right time/guy to lose my virginity to. She said, "you'll just know." You can imagine how this made me INSANE with vagueness, but I have to say that she was 100% right. I just knew. And it's probably that way with knowing when you are in love.
You'll just know, b/c there will be more good and less bullshit, not so many questions and variables, and you'll feel like your life would be infinitely different were that person not in it.
There, those are my two...okay, maybe three or four...cents.
Love is determined by a massive supercomputer named Big Blue... It randomizes people in a lottery where it picks two names and makes those two people fall in love... Don't forget to put your name in the hat.- you too can also be smitten.
Big Blue has a hat?
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