Love actually
- Stoppelmann
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Love actually
Well, yes, you can put it that way, but it doesn't really describe the feeling you have, like Dr. Suess: "You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
I remember how it struck me a long time ago, and I think I was infatuated with her at first, filled with a frothy love and admiration for everything she had, even her quirks and the irregularity of her teeth, and we laughed a lot. We also talked a lot, and although my faulty German amused her, she suggested that we speak English, which appealed to me even more. That was forty-six years ago now, and we still talk a lot, love being together, going on vacation together, but we have also learned to give each other room to breathe, to follow our passion, and we both want to grow old together.
Love is really a feeling that we belong together, but it's not just in intimate relationships, but neighbourhood love is the same thing, just not as intimate. It's when people realise that some kind of bond has grown between them, which can be difficult if you're not able to differentiate and think that it always must be an sexual relationship. It is a feeling that begins to grow when the natural bond with our parents changes and one begins to look outward. Usually, it is when puberty sets in and you have this high when you are with your friends, or with certain friends, or with a boy or girl next door. At this stage, you are usually easily disappointed because you become possessive or circumstances cause you to break up, and you hope for a similar feeling with others. How many girls have I longed for after meeting them, and how many have I disappointed? Do we know?
With time, one tends to look back, and sometimes it is quite involuntarily, with faces and situations appearing in one's thoughts, dreams, situations, places and pictures. These are the moments when occasionally the feeling of guilt arises in me, when I realise that I have disappointed people in the past. I even had the opportunity to tell someone that I had become aware of my unkindness, and they waved it off and said it wasn't that important to them - that hurt. A slap in the face for my presumption and a lesson. We can't just go around hurting people or we'll end up lonely. Fortunately, I have someone, but I know many who have not been able to find that one person again.
What I realised early on, but I didn't have the experience or vocabulary to describe it, was that this sense of belonging was always there. It is there even when a group of colleagues has an understanding that gives them an added identity, a sense of "we," the "us" feeling, and where they experience a kind of flow between them. Group successes are celebrated, and I’ve seen how sometimes it's hard for colleagues to go home when their relationship is faltering. I became jarringly aware of this when I made the mistake of transferring a young girl who worked in our group on weekends to another group. At first, I felt uncomfortable, but her tears made me realise how much she felt she belonged to the group and what a disappointment I had caused.
I had a growing awareness of the fundamental need for love in all of us that is like a receptor for a correspondent effector, and learning that endorphins, a type of neurotransmitter or hormone, produced by the body during pleasurable activities, not only boost your mood, but act on opiate receptors and are the body’s natural pain relievers too, seemed to confirm that. Therefore, as if we didn’t intuitively know it already, love and the many activities associated with love are confirmed by science to be also good for our physical being and is a biological necessity. We are made for love and if we lack the intimate love that we yearn for, we at the very least need the feeling of belonging.
But it was the early encounter with the books of Erich Fromm that made me realise better for the first time, that this bond of love was more than just a sentiment. And following his lead, I discovered many more who were teachers in this respect, especially Christian teachers, who showed me the various expressions of love, which are well documented in the New Testament, such as joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control for example. There are obviously many other examples, and Fromm showed that love is really a verb, something that we do which is an expression of being. If we do not love, something has broken inside.
Today, we tend to ask why I should do things, what is it for, does it have a utilitarian function, and imagination, creativity, the capacity for religious awe, music, dance, poetry, art, love of nature, a moral sense, a sense of humour and the ability to change [our] minds are seen as secondary. The truth is that these are methods of experiencing or enacting love in some form and essential. The utilitarian view is that our activity must be seen to be effective, but a quiet appreciation of what I am doing is existentially more important. Competition has its value in motivating us towards better results, but it is only part of the story, which is why our society is suffering today. Love provides us with meaning, the reason why it is worth it – without it, we lose hope.
The problems with ideologies lie in the fact that most of them do not come from the heart, but start from an invented scenario that has very little to do with our emotional reality and tends to want to change external circumstances without considering the emotional consequences. Love is viewed superficially and critically by many without realizing how important it is, and unfortunately many people have inhibitions about expressing their need. You have to be empathic to feel the need for love in someone, and sometimes when you become aware of it, it is overwhelming. We tend to shy away from such strong emotions, which only makes them more desperate. People who suffer like this feel trapped, cut off, and sometimes they become eccentric, which doesn't help their cause.
If you are wondering why there are so many examples of mental disorders in this day and age, I believe you will find an answer here. People are often unaware that they cannot relate to others, they turn to anonymous sources, even to a perverted infatuation, because the real thing is not available to them, and they themselves contribute to cutting themselves off. During my time as a patient after burnout, I became aware of how many other patients lacked a loving influence and tended to cling to any affection. It was my love of caring for others, whether patients or co-workers, that was denied to me by my employer whose only goal was profit, which caused my burnout. Where love cannot grow and flourish, we become ill.
As Elie Wiesel once said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” People who respond indifferently to others ensure that passion remains limited, expressed only in endless platitudes, grey faces devoid of emotion, and narcissistic displays on social media, and compassion and empathy for others cannot grow.
The question that keeps coming up is: if evolution is the sole cause of our existence, why is love so important? Is it just an evolution of nurture? I have found that many people who express their love in an exemplary way have a source to which they refer, whether religious or otherwise. Sometimes it's a positive response to a negative experience. Or is it the suggestion by mystics of various traditions that love is the fundamental expression of being, as in our own physical state? No wonder, then, that mystics use a poetry of love to describe their relationship with the divine.
Do you have an explanation of where it comes from?
One, that home is not a place, but a feeling.
Two, that time is not measured by a clock, but by moments.
And three, that heartbeats are not heard, but felt and shared.”
― Abhysheq Shukla
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023