Valentine’s Day special on love by a Philophile.
Philophile
[Lover of love]. Greek root ‘philein’ means “loving”
What is love?
Is it a February
industry? Or is it many more things or many other things of which February
industry is also one?
Can love be divided
and described under various categories? What is wrong in doing that? Is it
domain specific? Is it easily definable? Or does it defy any particular
definition?
Or probably we may
get drowned in an ocean of definitions?
Especially those defining in extremes that
you may get confused by different waves and definitely get drowned like these Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind”
or Ambrose Bierce in The Devil’s Dictionary:
“Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by
marriage” or Susan Sontag, “Nothing
is mysterious, no human relation. Except love”.
Certain words have
acquired such a vast carapace of connotations, its real denotation and
etymology either gets faded in to insignificance or is hidden or is totally
forgotten or gets totally mutilated into multiple pieces or is replaced by the
multitudes of connotations each giving different meanings according to how
those who look at it from their perspective, or perception or prejudice etc.
This word ‘LOVE’ likewise throws up some very
usual, predominant and trite connotations, nothing wrong or immoral about them,
like romance, beauty, sex, relationships, devotion, happiness, morality,
religion, culture, society, thoughts, enjoyment etc, including in its cauldron
almost everything to do with life on the whole and that is the reason this word
rings a bell to all our senses whenever it is pronounced and make everyone to
either to act or to react or to think or
to do something about it. One may think of anything or do anything with this
word but no one can afford to ignore it or be indifferent to it. That’s why it
is supreme among words.
But despite all these,
the beauty of certain terms is that they have a certain inherent attributes,
intrinsic meaning, and values that pop out whatever is the connotation or
context in which that word is either used or misused. This most vibrant word ‘LOVE’ too is one such word wherein the
inherent attribute pops out every time either we use it or hear it.
Basically it is an
emotion/feeling that everyone experiences and it is a vibration inherent in
everything and therefore it could be or probably must be expressed in multiple
ways. After all variety is the spice of love and life.
I am aware of the
existence of vast and voluminous literature on love, lot of lovely
interpretations of love, many marvelous descriptions of love etc so everyone
may wonder and hesitate what more can one write on this subject and that too
not expressing love or using love as a medium to express something or as an
experience but to write something about love. I was emboldened and motivated again
by words of love from Debbie Millman’s advice on Courage and the Creative Life,
“Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as
you can, imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time. Start
now. Not 20 years from now, not two weeks from now, Now”.
For etymology
though I have a Large Overdose of Very Exciting and
interesting materials I would like to, for the sake of brevity, quote from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=love
“Old English lufu "love, affection, friendliness,"
from Proto-Germanic *lubo (cf. Old High German liubi "joy," German
Liebe "love;" Old Norse, Old Frisian, Dutch lof; German Lob
"praise;" Old Saxon liof, Old Frisian liaf, Dutch lief, Old High
German liob, Germanlieb, Gothic liufs "dear, beloved").
The Germanic words
are from PIE *leubh- "to care, desire, love" (cf. Latin lubet, later
libet "pleases;" Sanskrit lubhyati "desires;" Old Church
Slavonic l'ubu "dear, beloved;" Lithuanian liaupse "song of praise").”
I would like to
argue why not for example include the French ‘L’œuf’ meaning ‘egg’ symbolically,
referring to creation itself or the act of creation.
Even in the
etymology given above the Sanskrit word ‘lubhyati’ has many
meanings/connotations depending on the context with subtle nuances like desires
of, entice, interested in, long for, allure, covet, be perplexed or disturbed
mentally etc. Probably those who do not have a Sanskrit dictionary at hand may refer
to this link http://sanskritdictionary.com/?q=lolubhyate
Incidentally Sanskrit has 96 words for love, the most of any
language and no wonder from the love of karma, dharma to kama sutra they did
everything with love and involvement in a language par excellence.[1]
Though personally
for me love with anything or for anyone or about and/or from anything or anyone
is seldom a noun but always a verb, either transitive or intransitive defined
in terms of simple grammar and it is as much about giving as about receiving a reciprocal
affair [2]
Does
love have an opposite? Yes, it does, and it is fear. These two are the two
extremes of the spectrum of all human activities, thoughts, emotions etc. In
fact all human activities, emotions, thoughts etc could be, if at all there is
any single possibility of simplifying to understand life, classified broadly
under these two categories with varying degrees of their manifestation like
love into liking, desire, happiness, peace, pleasure, companionship, wish,
wanting, affection, relationship, togetherness, co-operation, physical,
emotional or psychological contacts, intimacy, enjoyments etc to name a few. Similarly fear can be said to manifest in
varying degrees as hatred, indifference, judgmental, avoidance, unwillingness,
disgust, destructiveness etc
While
fear is just the hinge [3]
love in its totality is a wonderful splendor beyond the realms of Time and
Space and that’s why it is mad, stimulating, creative etc
Even
the discrimination between love and lust is a feeling instigated more out of
socio cultural morality than any inherent intentional vice or injury implied. Though
morality is only contextual[4]
, like many other things in life, it gets injected into us through
indoctrination and conditioning that we automatically resort to filtering or
silting through socially approved sieves many actions, thoughts, emotions etc
leading to many conflicts, confrontations, co-operations, collaboration etc and
all these various appraisals of socio-cultural moral parameters have produced many
wonderful literatures, arts, theories, great stories etc which too play their
part in human evolution as part of
life’s own process of polishing the rough edges of emotions, feelings,
actions, thoughts etc to enable a less problematic social co- habitation of not
only human beings but of human beings with other species and the whole environment.
While
life is a circle or a cycle, human activities, thoughts and emotions in their
geometric progression come in and take different shapes and also shape life in
different ways and that’s why we have love triangles and squarely blame many
things for many of our actions and describe tangential behavior patterns etc.
Here are some of the things that I have written on these issues.[5,6]
Diane Ackerman, the great
science historian when she wrote a book titled ‘A Natural History of Love , writes, “What a small word we use for an idea so
immense and powerful it has altered the flow of history, calmed monsters,
kindled works of art, cheered the forlorn, turned tough guys to mush, consoled
the enslaved, driven strong women mad, glorified the humble, fueled national
scandals, bankrupted robber barons, and made mincemeat of kings. How can love’s
spaciousness be conveyed in the narrow confines of one syllable? If we search
for the source of the word, we find a history vague and confusing, stretching
back to the Sanskrit lubhyati (“he desires”). I’m sure the etymology
rambles back much farther than that, to a one-syllable word heavy as a
heartbeat. Love is an ancient delirium, a desire older than civilization, with
taproots stretching deep into dark and mysterious days.”
After reading such wonderful writing we are only tempted to
quote more and more from that wonderful book to bring out the entire gamut of
love in all its uses of glory as well as misuses of goriness. Let me reserve
those for quotes section on the psychology of love.
By its very nature Love
is Over flowing of excess with
inherent Vital Equilibrium.
This is well portrayed in The Diary of Anais Nin, “Something is
always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness,
great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.”
Love is, Life Operating Vital Energy, and Live Operative Vibrant Energy often Lovingly Outpouring Virtual Emotions and Leverage to
Operate Virtually Everything,perhaps,
like electric current it is one, Lively
Omnipresent Vibration Everywhere always
live, useful, and extremely functional in myriad ways and could become lethal
too.
Its manifestation
varies in the applications it is put to, depending upon whether we use to
illuminate a bulb; to cool a hot room with air conditioner; or to warm a cool
place with a warmer; or to use to burn a cloth; or use it to wash a cloth in a
washing machine; use it to char someone to death; or use it to treat someone or
to cure a disease; whether we use to operate a computer or a crematorium
incinerator.
So, by itself, it
is an immense power and an inevitable powerhouse of a feeling but it gets
modified in its manifestations of varying degrees of intensities depending upon
who uses it, how they use it, what for they use it and why they use it at all.
All these various aspects of uses, abuses, misuses of love are all excellently
explained in Eric Fromm’s wonderful book ‘ The Art of Loving’.
LOVE is one of those words which is a Live
wire Operating dynamically its Vibrations in Every domain and Lingers
around either Obviously or opulently
and Virtually gets Embedded or enmeshed or entangled.
For ordinary folks it Lives
in and Operates in Varying degrees or intensities in Everything; for artists it renders Lively and Offers joys Verily in Every shade of color; for musicians it Lives in Obvious harmony of Vibrations
of every Enchanting melody or sound;
for the Lofty vocabulary loving and Over-
sophisticated Versions preferring
elitists it dazzles in Every facet;
for the Learned scientifically
spirited it Operates and Verily exists in every successful Experiment; for the religiously minded
it Lives Obviously as per God’s Very
authentic stamp in Every life; for
the philosophically probing self it Leverages
and Operates rationally in Very Enlightening ways as John Armstrong says, “Philosophy is the successful love of thinking”; for
the spiritually enhanced it Lives , Operates Virtually in Every soul;
for the adolescent youth it is Lively
Overflow of Vast hormonal Exuberance
Lingering in Overall Virile Enthusiasm[7]; for a mathematician it is Living in a Overdose of Virtual
world of Every number and shape; for
a physicist it is Lively
experimenting of the Overpowering Vast Expanse of universe defying his definitions; for a chemist it is Life of Objects in Verified and
verifiable Elements; for a biologist
it is Living Organisms Vying to Experience life; for small children it
is Life in its Overabundant Vitality and Enjoyment; for adventurous spirits it is Living with an Objective
of Verifying and Exploring everything through actual
experience; for historians it is Life Over
periods of Varying Engagements and exchanges; for the rich
it is Luxury of Opulence
and Viable Expensive
experience; for the poor it is Living
in Obnoxiously pitiable and Vilifying Environments; for the environment lovers it is Living along with Other
species in Virtual respect of
sharing and Exchanging of everything; for the sincere students it is
Learning through Observation and Verbal as well as other non verbal understanding to get Educated; for teachers and preachers it
is Lifting up Others’ understanding Via
Enlightened communications; as per
saints, sages and religious people it is about Linking of your individual self to the Other supreme self through Virtuous
vibrations of living leading to Enlightened
wisdom; for parents it is concern about the Life of their children Overzealously
to become and remain Valuable on Earth for ever etching their name for posterity etc .
In way in everyone’s Life in
every way it has or has become a lasting Over
imposing Vital Element.
So, whatever profession, whichever perception, prejudice, priority,
preoccupation, position, power from which you look at it, it is inherently Lively, Operative or operational, Vibrant
and Ever present or at least
enjoyable.
In short, it is a Lively Omnipresent Vibration Everywhere;
it Lives
Virtually On Everyone’s inner
self; it Lingers Over Virtually Everything; Whether
one Likes it Or not, no one can Vie
with it to Escape; many Lives are Operated out of its Virtual
Exuberance.
The different labels assigned to it , the adjectives adorning it, many
prefixes and suffixes added to it, the
multiple contextually confining definitions to describe it ranging
from the Lusty Obnoxious ones tarnishing the Vitals
of this lovely Emotion to the Lofty Outpouring of ascribing Virtues
of Every hue to it are all the various manifestations,
differing perceptions, multiple mutilations, myriads of perspectives etc.
They are all like that because this emotion is very plastic, pliable and
elastic and allows itself to be used as however one wants to use it to be. The Loveliest part is from Outside it does not Vitiate anyone’s Endearing association with it.
Now let us move from these
Lovely Outpourings Of Valuable and worthy Endearments and Look at the many obvious and Operational
metamorphosis of this Virtue or vice
as it is Everywhere and how in many Literatures and Other domains it is Viewed
by Everyone through the Lenses Of Various
Enlightened individuals, through the Lovely Outpourings
of Varied
Experiences etc
Going back to where I started the topic defining LOVE thus: Love is Life Operating Vital Energy, and Live Operative Vibrant Energy.
So, Left to itself, it will Open up and blossom into a Very Energizing entity but will get modified, mellowed, mutilated,
muddied, misinterpreted etc when we convert it from an vibrant and vital energy
into a Lasting Obedient Valuable Entity to serve our Lewd, Lingering, Local, Lurking, Long
term Objectives Of Very selfish Emotions and worse still expect it to
be everlastingly embed in our confines then it would be wise to understand that
no vibrant and dynamic energy is that vulnerable to us but on the contrary it is we who are vulnerable.
However if we Long with all Our intense concentrated sincerity and Very badly want it then be Ensured love never fails.
Love can be for anything as for me it is [8]
Here is a link for many interesting quotes on love.
7 Other Definitions of
Real Love Worth Considering
52
Fascinating Facts About Love
Here is
what all poet and journalist Diane
Ackerman, the great science historian says in her book titled ‘A Natural
History of Love, “Common as child
birth, love seems rare nonetheless, always catches one by surprise, and cannot
be taught. Each child rediscovers it, each couple redefines it, each parent
reinvents it. People search for love as if it were a city lost beneath the
desert dunes, where pleasure is the law, the streets are lined with brocade
cushions, and the sun never sets.
It’s tempting to think of love as a
progression, from ignorance toward the refined light of reason, but that would
be a mistake. The history of love is not a ladder we climb rung by rung leaving
previous rungs below. Human history is not a journey across a landscape, in the
course of which we leave one town behind as we approach another. Nomads
constantly on the move, we carry everything with us, all we possess. We carry
the seeds and nails and remembered hardships of everywhere we have lived, the
beliefs and hurts and bones of every ancestor. Our baggage is heavy. We can’t
bear to part with anything that ever made us human. The way we love in the
twentieth century is as much an accumulation of past sentiments as a response
to modern life.
After all, there are countless studies
on war, hate, crime, prejudice, and so on. Social scientists prefer to study
negative behaviors and emotions. Perhaps, they don’t feel as comfortable
studying love per se. I add that “per se” because they are studying love —
often they’re studying what happens when love is deficient, thwarted, warped,
or absent. … We have the great fortune to live on a planet abounding with
humans, plants, and animals; and I often marvel at the strange tasks evolution
sets them. Of all the errands life seems to be running, of all the mysteries
that enchant us, love is my favorite.
We think of it as a sort of traffic
accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more
than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the
vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We
equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to
stand close. What could be scarier?
Love is the great intangible. In our nightmares, we can
create beasts out of pure emotion. Hate stalks the streets with dripping fangs,
fear flies down narrow alleyways on leather wings, and jealousy spins sticky
webs across the sky. In daydreams, we can maneuver with poise, foiling an
opponent, scoring high on fields of glory while crowds cheer, cutting fast to
the heart of an adventure. But what dream state is love? Frantic and serene,
vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate — love
commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest
skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. Sitting still, we are as daring as
gladiators. Love is
the white light of emotion. It includes many feelings which, out of laziness
and confusion, we crowd into one simple word. Art is the prism that sets them
free, then follows the gyrations of one or a few. When art separates this thick
tangle of feelings, love bares its bones. But it cannot be measured or mapped.
Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one can agree on
what it is”
Barbara Fredrickson, writes in Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do,
and Become (UK; public
library),
“First and foremost, love is an emotion,
a momentary state that arises to infuse your mind and body alike. Love, like
all emotions, surfaces like a distinct and fast-moving weather pattern, a
subtle and ever-shifting force. As for all positive emotions, the inner feeling
love brings you is inherently and exquisitely pleasant — it feels
extraordinarily good, the way a long, cool drink of water feels when you’re
parched on a hot day. Yet far beyond feeling good, a micro-moment of love, like
other positive emotions, literally changes your mind. It expands your awareness
of your surroundings, even your sense of self. The boundaries between you and
not-you — what lies beyond your skin — relax and become more permeable. While
infused with love you see fewer distinctions between you and others. Indeed,
your ability to see others — really see them, wholeheartedly — springs open.
Love can even give you a palpable sense of oneness and connection, a
transcendence that makes you feel part of something far larger than yourself.
Perhaps counter intuitively, love is far more ubiquitous
than you ever thought possible for the simple fact that love is connection. It’s that poignant
stretching of your heart that you feel when you gaze into a newborn’s eyes for
the first time or share a farewell hug with a dear friend. It’s even the
fondness and sense of shared purpose you might unexpectedly feel with a group
of strangers who’ve come together to marvel at a hatching of sea turtles or
cheer at a football game. The new take on love that I want to share with you is
this: Love blossoms virtually anytime two or more people — even strangers — connect
over a shared positive emotion, be it mild or strong.”
Love is a momentary upwelling of three
tightly interwoven events: first, a sharing of one or more positive emotions
between you and another; second, a synchrony between your and the other
person’s biochemistry and behaviors; and third, a reflected motive to invest in
each other’s well-being that brings mutual care.
This is no ordinary moment. Within this
mirrored reflection and extension of your own state, you see far more. A
powerful back-and-forth union of energy springs up between the two of you, like
an electric charge Odds are, if you were raised in a
Western culture, you think of emotions as largely private events. You locate
them within a person’s boundaries, confined within their mind and skin. When
conversing about emotions, your use of singular possessive adjectives betrays
this point of view. You refer to ‘my anxiety,’ ‘his anger,’ or ‘her interest.’
Following this logic, love would seem to belong to the person who feels it.
Defining love as positivity resonance challenges this view. Love unfolds and
reverberates between and among people —within interpersonal transactions — and
thereby belong to all parties involved, and to the metaphorical connective
tissue that binds them together, albeit temporarily. … More than any other
positive emotion, then, love belongs not to one person, but to pairs or groups
of people. It resides within connections.
People who suffer from anxiety,
depression, or even loneliness or low self-esteem perceive threats far more
often than circumstances warrant. Sadly, this overalert state thwarts both
positivity and positivity resonance. Feeling unsafe, then, is the first
obstacle to love.
Love’s second
precondition is connection, true sensory and temporal connection with another
living being. You no doubt try to ‘stay connected’ when physical distance keeps
you and your loved ones apart. You use the phone, e-mail, and increasingly
texts or Facebook, and it’s important to do so. Yet your body, sculpted by the
forces of natural selection over millennia, was not designed for the
abstractions of long-distance love, the XOXs and LOLs. Your body hungers for
more. True
connection is one of love’s bedrock prerequisites, a prime reason that love is
not unconditional, but instead requires a particular stance. Neither abstract
nor mediated, true connection is physical and unfolds in real time. It requires
sensory and temporal copresence of bodies .The main mode of sensory connection,
scientists contend, is eye contact. Other forms of real-time sensory contact —
through touch, voice, or mirrored body postures and gestures — no doubt connect
people as well and at times can substitute for eye contact. Nevertheless, eye
contact may well be the most potent trigger for connection and oneness.
Physical presence is key to love, to positivity resonance.
Love is a many-splendored thing. This classic saying is apt, not only
because love can emerge from the shoots of any other positive emotion you
experience, be it amusement, serenity, or gratitude, but also because of your
many viable collaborators in love, ranging from our sister to your soul mate,
your newborn to your neighbor, even someone you’ve never met before. At
the level of positivity resonance, micro-moments of love are virtually
identical regardless of whether they bloom between you and a stranger or you
and a soul mate; between you and an infant or you and your lifelong best
friend. The clearest difference between the love you feel with intimates and
the love you feel with anyone with whom you share a connection is its sheer
frequency. Spending more total moments together increases your chances to feast
on micro-moments of positivity resonance. These micro-moments change you.
Whereas the biological synchrony that emerges between connected brains
and bodies may be comparable no matter who the other person may be, the
triggers for your micro-moments of love can be wholly different with intimates.
The hallmark feature of intimacy is mutual responsiveness,
that reassuring sense that you and your soul mate — or you and your best friend
— really ‘get’ each other. This means that you come to your interactions with a
well-developed understanding of each other’s inner workings, and you use that
privileged knowledge thoughtfully, for each other’s benefit. Intimacy is that
safe and comforting feeling you get when you can bask in the knowledge that
this other person truly understands and appreciates you. You can relax in this
person’s presence and let your guard down. Your mutual sense of trust, perhaps
reinforced by your commitments of loyalty to each other, allows each of you to
be more open with each other than either of you would be elsewhere.”
[3 ]FEAR
[4] MORALITY
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