The Lover  (Contd.)

Sine Qua Non

Love

What is love? Why is it so wonderful when we have it, and why is it so painful when we lose it? Even though this is dangerous territory, most often attempted by pseudo-poets and other pitiful types, it is necessary to take a stab at it. After all, it's the whole point of this essay. Feel free to disagree, burst into laughter or skip this part.

Human beings need love. It is as important to them as food or air; sometimes, more so. Without love, we will die.

People will do absolutely anything for love. They will gladly die for love of another person. If they cannot find a person to love, they will transfer their love to animals, religion, politics or work.

Love is an emotion, like hatred, lust, envy, jealousy, rage, sorrow, joy, happiness, despair, hope. It combines the best of all of these, and brings out the best in the person who is experiencing it. Fear of its loss can bring out the worst of the emotions.

Love is a fulfilling emotion. Nothing else is needed if you have love. For short intervals, you don't even need food or sleep. Material things mean nothing in the presence as well as the absence of love.

It is certainly true that Nature always intends to produce the most perfect things, and therefore always intends to produce the species man, though not male rather than female; and indeed, if Nature always produced males this would be imperfection: for just as there results from body and soul a composite nobler than its parts, namely, man himself, so from the union of male and female there results a composite that preserves the human species, and without which its parts would perish.

Thus male and female always go naturally together, and one cannot exist without the other. So by very definition we cannot call anything male unless it has its female counterpart, or anything female unless it has its male counterpart.

And since one sex alone shows imperfection, the ancient theologians attribute both sexes to God. For this reason, Orpheus said that God made both male and female; and we read in Holy Scripture that God made male and female in His own likeness; and very often when the poets speak of the gods they confuse the sex.

-- The Courtier, Book Three.

The yearning of man for woman is a longing for lost wholeness. The condition of love is its attainment, and the experience of loss is to be ripped in half.

Coupling is a biological demand. There are two sexes, and reproduction requires that people physically get close to one another, drop barriers and become, in a sense, for a while, one person. In a real way, they do in fact become one person in their children. Sex is necessary, and the bonding that sexual union creates between two people keeps them together so that they will provide for their offspring.

Coupling begins with infatuation and sexual desire. Coupling and infatuation can, with the passage of time, become bonding and contentment. Bonding, contentment, physical satisfaction, friendship and shared goals become love.

Giving your body to someone else, letting them through your doors and inside your protections and ultimate privacy is a way to gain and give trust and respect. It is the ultimate trust, and demands trust in return. The joy that can be given and received is beyond expression. In this vulnerable state, the hurt that can be given is beyond expression.

The instinct for self-preservation puts self above all others It is pure ego. Love is the biological imperative that puts another above the self, to the species' benefit. Nature cares about the species, not about the individual: the individual matters to the individual, the individual does not matter to the species. Love is the abnegation of self for other.

Love is self-forgetting. It is the passionate concern for the other. Love is the awareness that the other is like yourself. The other's pleasure becomes your own pleasure; the other's pain, your own pain. It is loss of self, loss of individuality; becoming one.

Previous page: 3  Current page: 4 Next Page: 5

Back To Listings