Aristotle said, "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." Do you agree or disagree?
I disagree vehemently. Every person is individual, which is a fact that most people have no problem recognizing. Most people have heard the quote that talks about how copies aren't worth a penny. A soul isn't like a dollar. You can't divide it in half- each one is unique. Every person has his or her own. And although some may say that the 'halves would draw near each other,' having half a soul wouldn't do anyone any good. People are designed to love and want to be near other people, but that doesn't mean that those people have to share souls to want to be with one another. This quote doesn't do it for me. I don't ever want to be in a relationship that I lose my independence or sense of self in. I want to be able to be myself- not to be half of a person. Someone has to be okay by themselves before they can be okay with someone else. Relationships that are codependent lead one person to always giving and one person to always taking and no one wants to be one thing all the time. Relationships take work, and love certainly takes work. People don't just make relationships work out of nowhere- it takes cooperation between two very different people and sometimes things don't work out. One soul can't have a relationship with itself. It has to find one that complements it in a perfect way. Be your own person. Nurture yourself. If you take care of you, someone (not your other half- you are whole) will come along and help you then ask you to return the favor. Don't be ridiculous. Actually, do. Just be ridiculous in a way that is all your own.
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The song with the same title from Hairspray comes to mind. Life's a forty-five when you can't buy it. (Without love) life's like getting my big break and laryngitis! Like a week that's only Mondays, only ice cream, never sundaes, like a circle with no center, like a door marked do not enter! Darling, I'll be yours forever cause I never wanna be without louhouhouhuhoooove darling never set me free. I'm yours forever. Never set me free, (Tracy) no no noouhoo.
That was your showtune of the day. But now on to actual content. Today's question is: can people live without love? The song? Well obviously. In fact, dear reader, my singing/quoting last paragraph might have made you want to pull your hair out. The choice/feeling/situation? I believe people can survive without love. It's not a basic need. Your body doesn't need to receive an adrenaline rush from seeing someone or need to feel comforted when someone else is near. A human can survive without love, without a doubt. However, just because you are surviving doesn't mean you are living. All people are made up of three 'parts,' if you will: the body, the mind, and the spirit. Your body will have no trouble whatsoever living without love. Your mind can live without love, but it's not really all that healthy and it will usually accept some other emotion like anger or hatred as the norm. Your mind wants to feel loved. It wants the emotional high. It wants the security so it has one less thing to worry about. But your soul, your spirit, your heart... Your soul cannot thrive without love. Your soul was crafted with love in mind. Your heart cries out for love like the soil cries out for water. Without water, the grass can't grow, and trees can wither up and die. The same thing happens when your soul thirsts for love. It does not want for love as the mind does- it needs for love. It needs for warmth from its creator. When we deprive our souls of that love of God, we spend much of our time trying to find a way to fill that deep imprint from love in our souls with junk. Some try to fill that hole with drugs, some with alcohol, some with sex. But those things will never fill you up. Those things will leave you panting for more, and like saltwater, will only leave you more thirsty. But the water of the love of God is pure and undefiled. It fills the spirit up and satisfies completely. When God made us, He created us with a want for his love that someday we would find it and draw close to him. Without the love he designed us for, we are lost. Without that great love of God, we will try whatever we can to fill that hole. I tried friends. I tried religion. I tried so many things and I was just surviving from day to day. But I never truly lived until I found true perfect love. Erich Fromm said, "Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you'." How do you define mature love?
I copied this prompt at school today because I didn't want to misquote and my phone doesn't like me to copy and paste. Immature love is what I think of as puppy love. You're just in a relationship and you really really like them. Or maybe not even them, just the idea of having 'someone.' When we want immature love, the who doesn't matter nearly as much as the what, or the feeling. Chasing a feeling, however, will not lead to a happy relationship (especially a happy marriage) because feelings fade, and the person you are with is simply the means to an end. In mature love, though, the person you are with is not the means. He or she is the end. In mature love you don't need to seek out a feeling because although the feeling is still there, like all human emotions, it comes and goes. Mature love is where you stick with someone because you love the person no matter what they're like this minute or this week. Mature love does not wane. It does not waver. It is not selfish; in fact, it is selfless. Love, I think, comes on in stages, not following this system exactly. Maybe I should wrote out my theory someday. Crushes, infatuations, cares, wants to be near because of the butterflies, wants to be near because you're lonely, wants to be near for status, wants to be near as protection, then finally wants to be near because you genuinely love the person no matter what they do or say. While the first few things on that list are certainly not bad, they signify that you haven't gotten to the mature part of your relationship yet. The next few are red flags that successful relationships cannot be built around or onto, and the final item on that list is mature love. I need YOU and no one else because I love you. Grow together if you're in a relationship, and if you aren't, I encouarage you just as Sing of Solomon does to 'not stir up love until it pleases.' |
AuthorTwenty-something kind-of-adult woman trying to navigate her future, her calling, and her God. Archives
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