Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Counterfeit Love

There is a lot that I have read on love...scientific research studies, novels, philosophical essays, etc. There is a lot that I have done out of love. There is also a lot that I have experienced in the name of love...both pleasant and painful. So, should it not be easy to write a post on love? Strangely, it isn't. Despite my readings, practice, and experience, I feel pretty unequipped to write about love. I certainly do have my ideas about love, but then who doesn't, right? After all, we have all experienced love in one form or another. So, can I say something new about love that you don't already know?

As I think more about the topic, may be I don't have to say something new. May be what we need most is  a confirmation of what we already know deep inside our hearts. What we all know intuitively is that love plays a very important role in our happiness. That is the reason, when we do not have enough love around us, we feel distressed. We feel almost as if we are gasping for air. Love, in this way, is almost like oxygen; it breathes life into us. According to evolutionary psychologists, we feel this way because relationships were so critical to our survival. We needed others not only during our early childhood years, but also during our adulthood years. Without the help from fellow beings, we would not have survived the harsh conditions in which we lived millions of years ago. So, the need for love and belongingness has become part of our genetical makeup. And perhaps that is the reason we have so much of trepidation around love; we want to be sure that we have it.

But we do not just want any love. We all want true, authentic love. The issue is that whenever something is very valuable to us, we also tend to see a lot of fakes. We see that in the natural world, where many organisms fake capabilities that they don't really have. We also see this in our materialistic world, where there are a lot of counterfeits for all the big and valued brand names. I believe the same happens with respect to love too. There is a lot of  pretentious love out there mixed along with the authentic varieties. Therefore, it becomes really difficult to distinguish the authentic variety from the fake ones, more so because the fakes have learnt to adorn many of the superficial characteristics of the authentic. Unfortunately, the heavy dose of fantasy that we get through commercial campaigns, movies, and soaps, make the differentiation process even more difficult. We have become so overawed by the symbols of love than actual love itself that we have lost our acuity to distinguish the real from the counterfeit. No wonder we suffer.

To be continued ...

4 comments:

  1. Sir,
    I don't know what is love .

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    1. I don't either. :) But I definitely feel that I have a better understanding of it now than I had before. I think love is a continuous process of discovery.
      Thank you for your comment!

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  2. In my personal experience... If you can love for love sake,you have hit the jackpot,experienced what pure love is.. source of all happiness, which we try to seek in material,relationships,religion or all sort of intellectual gymnastics.

    No one can be uneffected by such pure love....just try it ...it works.Like the mothers love for the child ,so pure and devoid of any motive or expectation.Our mental expectations and desires make the love and loving impure and our vibrational frequency always attracts people or situations which nirror our internal state and than starts the blame game.

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    1. First of all, thank you for sharing your experience and thoughts on the matter. You make some very interest points.

      Love for love's sake is great ideal. That's unconditional love. Unfortunately, most of us wish to be loved that way, but don't ourselves love that way.

      It's also very interesting that you mention something that has been termed the law of attraction. I think it has a lot of merits, but to believe solely in it is naivete. Haven't we met all met a good-hearted people suffering ill fates, and so called evil individuals enjoying and prospering? Why this obvious disparity? I think the law of attraction has been overemphasized. There are several other "laws" that need to be taken into consideration that when interact with the law of interaction completely skew the outcomes. It's a really interesting topic that you raised. I'll think more on it, and hopefully share something sensible here on this blog.
      Thanks again!

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