Note: (Musing follows)
Author Notes about this Blog
Love
I was once asked if there was any topic I would find it difficult to muse about. There is, and the topic is love. Love is a feeling and therefore not definable. James Baldwin once wrote: "Everybody's journey is individual. You don't know with whom you're going to fall in love….if you fall in love with the wrong color, wrong religion, wrong sex--you fall in love." I reckon, with enough insight and mastery of language, perhaps one could accurately define why any particular two people fall in love. Yet even there it is not really transferable. Try at a social gathering to explain exactly why and how strongly you love your spouse or any other designation of your paramour and watch everyone roll their eyes and drift away. It is you who love that person and you cannot create the same feelings in someone else.
How many people have tried to explain to their parents why they love who they love and the parents remain in disbelief? How many times have we heard someone share with us "I don't know what she/he sees in him/her. I sure hope they don't marry". Of course we know that, like any other feeling, the feeling of love can change over time. I suppose, if marriage ceremonies where more truthful the preacher would constantly be adding "at this moment in time do you…….." It certainly doesn't help to say "what God has put together let no man put asunder". What is that suppose to mean? Roughly half of marriages in this country do not last. Does this mean God has rather poor perception? We tend to drag God in on a lot of important matters as a means to finalize the course of action, and remove it from any further judgment.
Some things in life are so individualized and so personal that we need quit trying to generalize about them. If Millicent loves Honschnivel that is the all and end of it. How can anyone else pass judgment on it unless someone in that relationship is not of age? Of course we can love for the wrong reason but we also know it is kind of useless to predict which marriages will last. Another thing about love: forget the uniqueness of a marriage. Most people, given a free choice, would marry someone else. We may want to take the prom queen to the prom but chances are that is out of our reach. Marriage is usually some sort of compromise and we marry someone with whom we are a match. And that match usually takes us down the ladder a few steps. Some say love can be irrational but this defies logic. Love is a feeling, the feeling is quite real, and therefore the love is rational. It may not last, but at the time it is real and rationale.
Love, it is often said, is the greatest feeling in the world or the ultimate goal in our personal lives. It may be the greatest feeling in the world, but love often can create varying degrees of stress and even bring ruin to one's life. Love has caused many a person to lose a job, friends, family support, social approval, or bring on mental problems, and cause risky behavior which changes the rest of your life forever. The media is full of love situations which have run amok. On the other hand, there may be truth to the saying "It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all". Love is not an endless period of stress-free eternal bliss. Quite the opposite in that we are confronted rather brutally with our own intransigence and peculiar ways. We grapple with high stakes compromises/tolerances which cannot be solved by "my way or the highway". That works in other kind of relationships as we constantly choose others of whom we are going to stay clear. And vice-versa---there are others who decide to stay clear of us. Love requires change---or the highway option becomes the Waterloo for the love.
Not all marriages are based on love, but may be marriages of convenience. Sometimes these kind of marriages last the longest. Some marriages begin with love and last as a convenience. Of course kids complicate any marriage in endless ways.
Love lost for factors beyond our control---death, social or family intolerance, financial factors, changing personalities involved, etc.-------- may not be a real total separation. Memories last, and much of the way we think or act the rest of our lives may be dictated by the perpetual influence of the lost love. In this respect the lost love imposed more changes on our own persona/behavior than any other event in our lives. Under these circumstances we are never really alone and the essence of a past love remains a daily companion for the rest of our lives.
Many of my musings run too long. Not this one. What more is there to really say? The only aspect of love that any of us can pose any claim to, with accurate perception, is our own feelings of love toward someone else. And we cannot transfer our feelings in a relationship to others who do not have the same feelings toward the person that we have toward that person. "Live and let live" fits this category perfectly. The world would clearly be a better, more peaceful place to live if this mentality prevailed.
