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joegodaI find that there is one word that confuses me, over and over. It's a human word, doesn't exist in any other language that I'm aware of, though there are bound to be plenty of folks who argue the point. Still... they would have a hard time convincing me that they, themselves, speak any language other than human because it is that very limitation that causes them to act as they do. They are human beings, limited in scope of life, limited in depth of thought, limited in complexity of language. Like the word 'god', which, oddly I can totally understand without needing to know the details, (that is the basis of this particular Abstraction - details don't really exist. All evidence is anecdotal and therefore hearsay) the word love carries with it much the same reaction and revulsion.
Why revulsion? Oh, because there is, I feel, so much misunderstanding of the concept. Love isn't a feeling. Love is a concept. Love is an idea and an ideal. Feelings are chemical in nature. Love isn't. Feelings are a reaction to stimulus. Love is a... rationalization of that reaction. A conceptualization of a dream of an ideal. Love is some thing that we have defined as a saving, when it is really just a definition to fit what we want it to fit.
Why revulsion? Because, because it isn't real. It's a lie we tell ourselves to explain a chemical reaction that hurts so badly we can't help but be lost in it and yet, enjoy the sadness and pain in retrospect.
We place far, far too much demand on such a little word. We use it to fit almost any sort of thing we merely like. We 'Love' that color. We 'Love' that experience. We 'Love' eating or sitting or camping or driving or...
No. We really don't.
Love... I don't think we know what that means, anymore. Love. See... do you really love Ice cream? Would you do anything to ensure Ice Cream's happiness over your own? Would you sacrifice all that you had to keep Ice Cream happy and safe and warm and secure?
I didn't think so. So... you have a limit to love, then. Now it's little 'l' love. Which isn't really love, is it? It's more like... Like. A strong Like. A Like with a capital 'L'. Okay.. I'll let that set for a second while I get into the other part of 'Love' that is a revulsion to me.
'In' Love. I'm in love with... You can't be 'in' love at all. You either love, or you don't. Simple as that. Why do I say that? Here:
To be 'in' love means that your happiness is far more important than whoever or whatever you 'love' Little 'l'. Why do I say this? "Where are you?" "I miss you!" "I'll die without you!" "My life has no meaning without you?" "If you leave me, I'll kill myself!"
See the pattern? If not, stop reading now, because you won't get it.
To be 'in' love is an incredibly selfish act, where you demand...not just ask, but demand all the attention that you can get from whomever or whatever. Seriously. It is, without a doubt, the furthest thing from love that a person can have. I'd rather you were indifferent than 'in' love with me. Love me or leave me... please. Just don't gross me out by being 'in' love with me. I don't play that sort of territorial game. Hell, I don't even know what 'jealousy' is.
I have lost lovers (another odd word) because I admitted that I wasn't 'in' love with them. I really pissed off the first wife with that admission. I liked them a great deal. I even loved them...some of them. But 'in' love? I would not do such a disservice to another human being.
Love I hold in great esteem. Love is, as Max has said, "The greatest thing in the world, next to an MLT." Love I has me in Awe. It is, to me, Awesome, in the true sense of the word.
With Love, all things are possible. Really. You can move the moon if you have the love. Okay... that's a bit poetical, but there it is.
Look... the first time I ever loved someone and knew it was when I held a 6 week old baby in my arms. Up until then, I had no idea what the word meant. And I was wondering about what it meant, because it seemed to elude me. I was that sort of kid.
I was a morose, introspective, sad dumbass, who forgot to have fun as he was growing up. Instead, I crawled into my belly button to answer some of these questions:
Who am I?
Why am I here?
Why is anything?
What is love?
Love was important because, I think, I had a screwed up and skewed up concept of it. Mom and dad were not the best of role models... then again, perhaps they were the perfect role models... they got me to thinking about it, after all. Love was a dilly.
Growing up, I felt strongly towards a number of folks... men and women. As a boy, it was girls and boys. I felt strongly towards my brothers. I suppose I loved them. I suspect I just liked them a lot, because sometimes I wished them dead.
Now... when one of them passes away... dies... I cry and mourn and carry sadness for quite a while. They are my brothers, after all, and I miss them as I would miss my left arm or a big toe. But love them? I dunno. I don't think it's a requirement for life to love your blood family. In fact, I know it's not a requirement. So, you don't have to love your blood family. Loyalty is not love. You can be loyal to the assholes, because nobody can treat my brother like that. See? But that's not love. That's territorial. That's some weird genetic bonding thing. Not love.
I have liked women more then men. I'm sort of... Oh, asexual now, I guess. Pity my poor wife, but I suspect she's used the energy to further her own interests, and good on her. There was a time when my appetites were very, very large.
Everyone who is reading this has known me after those appetites started to fade to the point of non-existence. Do I miss it? Not really. The moment I realized that a 30 minute or 4 hour session of foreplay followed by a 15 second ejaculation which was followed by "I wonder what's on TV" just wasn't frigging worth it. Get me to the TV or the book or whatever and leave that 'growing closer' to the young kids. I'll grow closer my own way, thank you. I will 'grow closer' using Love.
So, what does sex have to do with love? Not a damned thing. Nothing. That's my point of my little admission. That thing that was once the center of my being - my Pan Essence - no longer exists. But.. but... but... NOW I can Love stronger.
Love is a convention. An idea. A definition of a reaction. It isn't real... and yet, there may be nothing more real. People have died for it. People have lived for it. Palaces were built for it and stars were named for it.
Love isn't a fuzzy feeling. It's not the warm cocoa of the soul. Not even the cardigan sweater of the heart. It's something deeper. Something more serious. Something beyond the beyond of the deepest part our endless minds can imagine. It's out there, somewhere, beyond sight.
It's not palpable. You can't touch it, but you can hold it.
It's not visible, but you can see it. It's impossible to hear it, but the sound is unmistakable.
Love, for all we, as humans, try to pin it down, can't be defined in terms other than poetical, musical, fantastical phrases that only hint at the depth and meaning and substance of it.
I know this: At this point, if I say I love you, it means something far deeper, far stronger, far more serious (and I mean serious... like to the death serious) than 'in' love infatuation. Than anything superficially sexual at all.
I have grown enormously tired of all petty feelings and don't really have time for them. That is why I value friends like m'Ladye. She's never known me, and yet, she is a sister, wife, friend, old love, sitter on the porch sort of love that I can relate to. She too is tired.
Or Bill the Tailor. He's a man who sings with such depth that he makes me cry from the depth of it. And yet, I have read of his difficulties with some human conventions. This is a man I am pleased to call brother, and I love him as such. The world is stronger with him in it. He is important.
These are two examples. Only two out of millions... and perhaps billions.
Okay. This is a bit maudlin and getting icky. So I Love. Many people do. I think there are those who don't and I think there are those who can't. These are the scary ones. And you'll know them when you are near them, because there is something missing. Something sad. Something dangerous. I have known one or two of these people.
Those that can't Love are ... well.. I think the world would be best without them. But that's my personal thought, and I'm not a nice guy.
I'm running out of words. So, I guess that's bout all I have to say bout that.
Why revulsion? Oh, because there is, I feel, so much misunderstanding of the concept. Love isn't a feeling. Love is a concept. Love is an idea and an ideal. Feelings are chemical in nature. Love isn't. Feelings are a reaction to stimulus. Love is a... rationalization of that reaction. A conceptualization of a dream of an ideal. Love is some thing that we have defined as a saving, when it is really just a definition to fit what we want it to fit.
Why revulsion? Because, because it isn't real. It's a lie we tell ourselves to explain a chemical reaction that hurts so badly we can't help but be lost in it and yet, enjoy the sadness and pain in retrospect.
We place far, far too much demand on such a little word. We use it to fit almost any sort of thing we merely like. We 'Love' that color. We 'Love' that experience. We 'Love' eating or sitting or camping or driving or...
No. We really don't.
Love... I don't think we know what that means, anymore. Love. See... do you really love Ice cream? Would you do anything to ensure Ice Cream's happiness over your own? Would you sacrifice all that you had to keep Ice Cream happy and safe and warm and secure?
I didn't think so. So... you have a limit to love, then. Now it's little 'l' love. Which isn't really love, is it? It's more like... Like. A strong Like. A Like with a capital 'L'. Okay.. I'll let that set for a second while I get into the other part of 'Love' that is a revulsion to me.
'In' Love. I'm in love with... You can't be 'in' love at all. You either love, or you don't. Simple as that. Why do I say that? Here:
To be 'in' love means that your happiness is far more important than whoever or whatever you 'love' Little 'l'. Why do I say this? "Where are you?" "I miss you!" "I'll die without you!" "My life has no meaning without you?" "If you leave me, I'll kill myself!"
See the pattern? If not, stop reading now, because you won't get it.
To be 'in' love is an incredibly selfish act, where you demand...not just ask, but demand all the attention that you can get from whomever or whatever. Seriously. It is, without a doubt, the furthest thing from love that a person can have. I'd rather you were indifferent than 'in' love with me. Love me or leave me... please. Just don't gross me out by being 'in' love with me. I don't play that sort of territorial game. Hell, I don't even know what 'jealousy' is.
I have lost lovers (another odd word) because I admitted that I wasn't 'in' love with them. I really pissed off the first wife with that admission. I liked them a great deal. I even loved them...some of them. But 'in' love? I would not do such a disservice to another human being.
Love I hold in great esteem. Love is, as Max has said, "The greatest thing in the world, next to an MLT." Love I has me in Awe. It is, to me, Awesome, in the true sense of the word.
With Love, all things are possible. Really. You can move the moon if you have the love. Okay... that's a bit poetical, but there it is.
Look... the first time I ever loved someone and knew it was when I held a 6 week old baby in my arms. Up until then, I had no idea what the word meant. And I was wondering about what it meant, because it seemed to elude me. I was that sort of kid.
I was a morose, introspective, sad dumbass, who forgot to have fun as he was growing up. Instead, I crawled into my belly button to answer some of these questions:
Who am I?
Why am I here?
Why is anything?
What is love?
Love was important because, I think, I had a screwed up and skewed up concept of it. Mom and dad were not the best of role models... then again, perhaps they were the perfect role models... they got me to thinking about it, after all. Love was a dilly.
Growing up, I felt strongly towards a number of folks... men and women. As a boy, it was girls and boys. I felt strongly towards my brothers. I suppose I loved them. I suspect I just liked them a lot, because sometimes I wished them dead.
Now... when one of them passes away... dies... I cry and mourn and carry sadness for quite a while. They are my brothers, after all, and I miss them as I would miss my left arm or a big toe. But love them? I dunno. I don't think it's a requirement for life to love your blood family. In fact, I know it's not a requirement. So, you don't have to love your blood family. Loyalty is not love. You can be loyal to the assholes, because nobody can treat my brother like that. See? But that's not love. That's territorial. That's some weird genetic bonding thing. Not love.
I have liked women more then men. I'm sort of... Oh, asexual now, I guess. Pity my poor wife, but I suspect she's used the energy to further her own interests, and good on her. There was a time when my appetites were very, very large.
Everyone who is reading this has known me after those appetites started to fade to the point of non-existence. Do I miss it? Not really. The moment I realized that a 30 minute or 4 hour session of foreplay followed by a 15 second ejaculation which was followed by "I wonder what's on TV" just wasn't frigging worth it. Get me to the TV or the book or whatever and leave that 'growing closer' to the young kids. I'll grow closer my own way, thank you. I will 'grow closer' using Love.
So, what does sex have to do with love? Not a damned thing. Nothing. That's my point of my little admission. That thing that was once the center of my being - my Pan Essence - no longer exists. But.. but... but... NOW I can Love stronger.
Love is a convention. An idea. A definition of a reaction. It isn't real... and yet, there may be nothing more real. People have died for it. People have lived for it. Palaces were built for it and stars were named for it.
Love isn't a fuzzy feeling. It's not the warm cocoa of the soul. Not even the cardigan sweater of the heart. It's something deeper. Something more serious. Something beyond the beyond of the deepest part our endless minds can imagine. It's out there, somewhere, beyond sight.
It's not palpable. You can't touch it, but you can hold it.
It's not visible, but you can see it. It's impossible to hear it, but the sound is unmistakable.
Love, for all we, as humans, try to pin it down, can't be defined in terms other than poetical, musical, fantastical phrases that only hint at the depth and meaning and substance of it.
I know this: At this point, if I say I love you, it means something far deeper, far stronger, far more serious (and I mean serious... like to the death serious) than 'in' love infatuation. Than anything superficially sexual at all.
I have grown enormously tired of all petty feelings and don't really have time for them. That is why I value friends like m'Ladye. She's never known me, and yet, she is a sister, wife, friend, old love, sitter on the porch sort of love that I can relate to. She too is tired.
Or Bill the Tailor. He's a man who sings with such depth that he makes me cry from the depth of it. And yet, I have read of his difficulties with some human conventions. This is a man I am pleased to call brother, and I love him as such. The world is stronger with him in it. He is important.
These are two examples. Only two out of millions... and perhaps billions.
Okay. This is a bit maudlin and getting icky. So I Love. Many people do. I think there are those who don't and I think there are those who can't. These are the scary ones. And you'll know them when you are near them, because there is something missing. Something sad. Something dangerous. I have known one or two of these people.
Those that can't Love are ... well.. I think the world would be best without them. But that's my personal thought, and I'm not a nice guy.
I'm running out of words. So, I guess that's bout all I have to say bout that.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-08-22 08:58 pm (UTC)Feelings are chemical reactions/combinations in our body, even if we generally fail to notice this. AND, i would hasten to add, they are *addictive*, which is why you get those "i would DIE without you" reactions from people. We strongly associate our feelings with this person or that one, and if the feelings are identified as love, we are terrified to let go. Even when it's clearly an unhealthy place.
I thoroughly agree about babies. LOL
And you.... you, i love. I don't want to be around when you leave the planet, because my addiction will surely be harmed. LOL Ok, being silly, but still, you, i love.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-08-25 03:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-03-14 09:07 pm (UTC)