Whatshot
Through my eyes
Through my eyes
Date: 2020-02-21
A recent Quartz article insists that when choosing a life partner, we have to search for the right "eating companion for about 20,000 meals," "travel companion for about 100 vacations," "parenting partner" and "career therapist"-all while admitting that contemplating such a project "is like thinking about how huge the universe really is or how terrifying death really is."
Simon May, the philosopher who writes on love, said that people who were accused of basic psychological failings when they couldn't make their relationships work out have to take into account all the literature on unhappy love.
May said, "I don't think it's just people getting it wrong or not trying hard enough." He called love an "earthy emotion" that often provokes restless feelings like tension and guilt, and suggested the assumption that every love affair can be managed, denies the full humanity of our partners, their own "inscrutable and uncontrollable" natures.
Love is so complicated for so many people when it should really be one of the purest emotions on earth. Romantic love, my one friend told me, was like a long dance, a Tango, we follow the beat of our hearts, we twirl, and twist, we get entwined in each other, following each other's lead. It should be simple but for most it can be so hard.
Love is all to do about the other person: it is about the care, respect and understanding of that human. Love like this grows, it cannot help it. The more of yourself you invest in another person, the more you receive. You become as one: their pain is your pain, their joy, yours too.
There is so much love missing in this world. Perhaps people have forgotten to love and respect one another. Perhaps most think that love is reserved for that one special 'soul mate' somewhere in the blue yonder.
Yet at the base of every love story, there is fear. We are afraid. We are afraid to reveal ourselves, afraid to share ourselves, afraid to allow others into our hearts, minds, and souls. We are afraid to be ourselves.We are afraid that if people really knew us they wouldn't love us.That is the deepest of all human fears, lurking in the heart of every person.
Consciously and subconsciously, we are always asking ourselves, "If they really knew me, would they still love me Employ me Want to hang out with me " We desperately want to love and be loved. But we want to be loved for who we are, warts and all. And although we are afraid to reveal ourselves because of the possibility of rejection, it is only by revealing ourselves that we will ever open the possibility of truly being loved.
With this fear begins the great deception. This fear gives birth to the unending pretence. We are all flawed and we all have faults. None of us is perfect. Yet all of us go about putting our best foot forward, hiding the brokenness, pretending that we have everything under control and that all is well.
Lets continue celebrating the month of love, lets not be afraid to love, remembering that love is actually a verb that needs doing.