Love that insists on loving...

Love that insists on loving...
            On my blog, I have written various articles about love; many would wonder why do I have to speak of love many a times; well, partly because we’re such love obsessed people, but mainly because it’s a philosophically inexhaustible topic.  And secondly because of an experience I have gone through in recent times - do we really love to change people or to be changed?  Why do people in love have knowledge of what can irritate their partners and still go on and do them; do that mean they are not loving?  Is knowledge enough for love? What then is the condition of love? So and so many other questions can click on into our minds...Rules, laws and regulations and traditions, all these are good for they are meant to provide peace and order, social order to give direction to one’s life and to promote life. They are beneficial to us. But the moment we forget the person, for whom the laws were made and become too legalistic, too formalistic and structured, the laws cease to be life-giving. They stifle life. Instant judgments and counting the mistakes of others become then so natural that mercy, forgiveness and compassion are easily forgotten; love starts to condition...

           

Our focus this time will be less on romantic love, than on unconditional love, in all its manifestations – whether between romantic partners, between parents and their children, or between humanitarians and all humankind. I should start out by admitting that unconditional love is rare and difficult thing.  Parents may profess to love their children unconditionally.  But how often do children test the limits of parental love? Couples in the first blush of new love may make dewy-eyed promises to love each other for better or for worse.  But how often do such promises give way to betrayal and recrimination?   Still, it’s an amazing gift when it does happen.   And it’s one that we all want.  We all want someone who will love us forever, through thick and thin, no matter what we do or become. Part of me thinks that unconditional love is the highest form of love.  Most religions certainly seem to believe that.  That’s why they attribute unconditional love for all mankind to God.  It’s why Christ commands Christians to love thy neighbour as thyself. But, of course, unconditional love is easy for God - with his infinite patience and boundless capacity to forgive.   You can’t hurt God – not really.  But humans are vulnerable.  In us, too much hurt, betrayal or disappointment kills even the deepest, most enduring love.

            Of course, its one thing to focus on the work it takes for us to give or sustain unconditional love. That’s hard, I admit.  But think about what it’s like to be the recipient of such love.  That seems, at first blush, to be a really good thing to the recipient of.  Who wouldn’t want to be loved unconditionally, despite all your flaws and failings? On the other hand, part of me thinks that maybe unconditional love isn’t all its cracked up to be. Don’t people want to be loved and appreciated for who and what they are?  When somebody loves me unconditionally, doesn’t that mean they don’t care who I am or what I do and they are blind to my particularity? But isn’t love about delighting in the particularity of the other? But maybe that’s being too quick to dismiss. I mean just because you love somebody unconditionally, doesn’t mean you don’t care about what they are or what they do. Presumably, if you love them, you want them to be their best self.   You might even hope and believe that your love will help them become that. The “unconditional” part of unconditional love just means that - you won’t withdraw love when things go badly.