Some say unconditional love is the only true love. If so, then I will say that real is better than true. Love; imperfect, tainted, possibly impure, with all sorts of hopes and wants attached to it, is still the highest thing we can hope for in this life. Absolute or perfect love is, generally speaking, not what you get or give. But love is quite capable of thriving, even within imperfection. Such is the strength of real love, human love. Imperfect because we are imperfect, and because those we love are imperfect as well.
For most of us, love might be the single most important thing in life. A great freight of our hopes and dreams are attached to it. We search for love and cling to love so desperately that we can't help but tax it with demands and conditions. Love is more than capable of supporting these ordinary human wants and foibles. If we hold up unconditional love as an ideal, surely that ideal should inspire us - not cause us to disparage real, human love, in all of its conditional and imperfect forms.
If love weren't imperfect, we could never deserve it.
But that's not to disparage unconditional love, either. It is a meaningful goal, and we should strive towards it. We should do our best to look within ourselves, to remove the conditions that we've put in place, to transcend our merely selfish concerns and to perfect the love that is there. Maybe we can't finish the job in our lifetime, but every step taken in that direction will be a reward in itself, and well worth the effort.
6 comments:
>Love is more than capable of supporting these ordinary human wants and foibles.
I'd take this a step further: love that can't do so is paltry and weak; fastidious love, love that says, "oh I will shrivel away to nothing if ever a condition be put upon me!" So-called "Unconditional Love" is a cowardice and an artifice. It is unworthy of being called human emotion. It is a dry and theoretical creation of the intellect. A mere ideal.
Still, as I describe above, it can be a meaningful goal to strive for! But the great joy of love that wells up between two who so strive comes from the real love between them. Real love, freighted with human flaws AND human expectations, love not less true for that, but rather all the more real and precious for it. Our joy in each other is fueled by our real love, not by some wan, finicky, perfectionist ideal "Unconditional Love" - which some clepen "True."
I probably need to re-do the above post. Reading it now, I think I was trying to "go easy" on it.
I don't think I did? Change my argument?
Where did I? It's no contradiction is it?
If I've contradicted myself, I hope you'd jump at the chance to point it out! :-D
Wait, though. Conditions are conditions, are obligations, are expectations, and we lay them on each other because really - these are the LEAST we should be able to expect from one who SAYS...they love us!
There's nothing wrong with that.
I think "unconditional love" tries for an absolute, but falls afoul of the most basic conditions and expectations. We should not constantly condition love: "if you really loved me, you'd..." BUT, love does come with certain conditions, expectations that fall under the bare minimum of what love can countenance and still be love. These are valid.
But we should hopefully never sink that low! I mean, it IS A CONDITION to say: "If you beat me, I will leave you."
Too many today fall prey to that sort of "unconditional love."
You're welcome?
You're welcome!
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