Friday, May 10, 2024

Love - Neverending and Without Condition

 



"My love for you is never-ending and without condition."

I feel this way about my loved ones. 

It -- love -- seems to lose meaning with all of its extempore usage on greeting cards and trite, social media prepackaged notes. But, true love is there, always, no matter the circumstance or proposed mutual "give and take." It is so much more firm, steady, and ever-reliant ... and always forgiving. Words and translations truly give "love" little definitive definition. What I do know is that love is the most important emotion transcended by no other emotional conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear). Instead, it is typically accompanied by physiological and behavioral changes in the body as part of its strong attraction. Permanent changes of deep, deep affection.

Whether arising out of kinship, companionship, admiration, or benevolence, “love” designates an unparalleled good will and benevolent, good-will concern for the good or welfare of others. It involves both care and desire so stable that nothing can lesson its degree of deep affection and kindness. For that matter, no matter the changing circumstances of world in which loves exists, it abides forever in my life and after the death of my departed loved ones. The generalizations I have made may be be broad  and hackeyed with few or no conditions to living stimuli: however my emotions of love are stronger than any other bond in my existence. My goal is to have you love me.

Closeness, admiration, respect, and warmth comprise its complexity, yet no objective measure of the strength and character of liking or loving in a given relationship is quite possible. It retains a mysterious, tough-to-define quality of life force, involving various grants of forgiveness and beloved grace. How true. Love does conquer all.

One can try to create a model for different aspects of love. For example, "Canadian psychologist John Lee, built a color-wheel model in theory based on an analogy with the set of primary and secondary colors and draws upon ancient Greek terms for various forms or aspects of love. The three “primary” styles of love in Lee’s model are Eros, or erotic love; Ludus, or playful love; and Storge, or familial love, exemplified by a parent’s love for a child. Just as primary colors can be mixed to produce various secondary colors, so can primary love styles be combined to form “secondary” love styles, which Lee also referred to with ancient Greek terms. Thus, Mania, or obsessive love, represents a mixture of Eros and Ludus; Pragma, or mature love, is a mixture of Ludus and Storge; and Agape, or unconditional, selfless love, is a mixture of Storge and Eros."

(Sophia Cherney, Love - Emotion. Encyclopedia Britannica. Fact-checked by Editors of' Encyclopedia Britannica. Last updated on March 22, 2024.)

Yet, the circles exist without end, and the meaning does little to give justice to the strength and necessity of love I feel. Lee built an interesting theory, yet it does little justice to the emotional aspects of love without any condition. I feel true love on a color wheel is akin to a carnival spin in a sideshow -- a shallow, incomplete construction whose loss and rewards are based largely on chance and circumstance. All the condition of chance and circumstance in true love will certainly takes its sweet time to "go out the window" and leave the purity of love intact.

I believe true love owes nothing to its division and trying to conceive this largely serves to confuse the reader. In categorization, it cheapens the honest, heartfelt emotion as a simple spin designated as pieces of "a pie graph" and unfeeling designation. Word play and chance to me are insufficient to define anything other than an obligation to accept intensities and differences in its wide range of feeling. Love is so much more definite and less apt to be pigeonholed into its various scientific forms. Love blossoms in its eternity in all forms -- you get no "spins," just ample opportunities to show the emotion -- you love: you win.

Many biochemists consider love to be a biological process. They hold that positive socializing triggers cognitive and physiological processes that create desirable or beneficial emotional and neurological states. A relationship provides constant triggering of sensory and cognitive systems that prompt the body to seek love and to respond positively to interaction with loved ones and negatively to their absence.

I, of course, agree that love involves a a psychological process just as strong as its physiological peculiarities. After all, love is an emotion. However, any negativity is self-administered. Call it pity or pride, those concepts are self conceived -- we are meant to forgive and love others. Period. And to love ourselves for what we are in the process of spreading love, the same. Love yourself and others. "Everything worth having costs something, and the price of true love is self-knowledge." source unknown.

"Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
" 

—Poet Veronica A. Shoffstall

American psychologist Robert Sternberg argued that love has three emotional components: intimacy, passion, and decision or commitment. Familiar forms or experiences of love can be understood to consist of a single component, different combinations of two components, or all three components. For example, the love that is characteristic of close friendships or liking consists of intimacy alone; infatuation consists of passion alone; “empty love”—which may exist at an early stage of an arranged marriage or at a later stage of a deteriorating marriage—consists of commitment alone; romantic love consists of intimacy and passion; “companionate” love consists of intimacy and commitment; fatuous love consists of passion and commitment; and consummate, or complete, love consists of a combination of all three components, intimacy, passion, and commitment. Sternberg also held that forms of love consisting of combinations of components tend to last longer than those consisting of single components.

(Sophia Cherney, Love - Emotion. Encyclopedia Britannica. Fact-checked by Editors of' Encyclopedia Britannica. Last updated on March 22, 2024.) 

Naturally, many biochemists consider love to be a biological process. Positive socializing triggers cognitive and physiological processes that create desirable or beneficial emotional and neurological states. A relationship provides constant triggering of sensory and cognitive systems that prompt the body to seek love and to respond positively to interaction with loved ones and negatively to their absence. 
 
Recent biological theories of love, pioneered in evolutionary research by the American anthropologist Helen Fisher, break down love into three biological processes: lust, attraction, and attachment. Lust generally operates through the distribution of the hormones, testosterone and estrogrgen attraction via the orgainic compound dopamine and the neurotransmitters nor epinephrine and serotonin, and attachment through the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin. For evolutionary biologists, each component of love has an evolutionary basis: lust for encouraging sexual reproduction, attraction for discriminating in favor of healthy mates, and attachment for facilitating  familial bonding.

 (Sophia Cherney, Love - Emotion. Encyclopedia Britannica. Fact-checked by Editors of' Encyclopedia Britannica. Last updated on March 22, 2024.)


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh my God, clinical approaches to understanding love are numerous and pretty cumbersome. That doesn't mean I disagree with all of these theories; it just means my understanding of true love boggles the brain and can or cannot produce accepted theory as fact. I'm much too involved in loving my kin and friends to reduce our relationships to scientific terms and psychological discussions. To me, love = love. It is a commandment give by God -- even if complicated by the Golden Rule and Two-way Streets -- to simply define and put to practice by degrees.  

Distance, separation, divorce, and death do not change one's love for another. It lives on in various vows, expressions and deep understandings -- I think that love is indestructible, no matter the disagreement. To me, love is the strongest, most fertile, eternal emotion that guides all good life decisions and, forever, longs for it's own self  in utmost need. I simply believe love = a good life on earth and expectations in the hereafter. God, himself or herself, must be a true generation of loving spirit. The gift is ours for taking, and although some have a very rough time experiencing love from others -- to the point of abuse and hatred -- it is love that overcomes all evil. Call that spiritual interpretation; however, I call it acceptance of all forms of love.

 “Love conquers the body by embracing it,
conquers the mind by massaging it,
conquers the heart by kissing it,
and conquers the soul by marrying it.” 

 
Canadian-based philosopher Matshona Dhliwayo

"Love's" entomology is very complicated . Love is now widely believed (due to historical written record) to be from the idea that when one does a thing “for love” it is for no monetary gain, the word “love” thus implying "nothing." Other etyomological meanings show notations related to praise, carnality, lust, charity, and benevolent concern for another. 

The one word history I prefer is now obsolete and translates to "a thin silk material" (a * Sive, a piece of Cyprus, or a "Love-Hood."). This speaks mainly to to the fragility of the emotion of dance and its delicate making and mastery.

* ("sieve") is a Cypriot traditional dance, performed with a sieve (tatsia -τατσιά in the Cypriot dialect).
 
Tatsia is a dance of skill, combining the hand and body in non-stop movement. The dancer holds a sieve in his hand with the four main fingers on the top of the inside perimeter of the sieve, while his thumb is on the top of the outside. Then an assistant of the dancer (usually a woman), or even the dancer himself, puts a glass of wine on the bottom of the inside perimeter of the sieve. The wine within the glass must not exceed the middle of the glass. Then the dancer performs a variety of moves with his hands holding the sieve, as he is dancing to the rhythm. The dancer can put in the sieve as many glasses of wine as he likes. In order to put more than three though a bigger sieve is required as well as a small piece of wood to put on the three base glasses. That small piece of wood is used as a surface on which the other glasses can be put on. 
 
In any case the glasses must not touch the top perimeter of the sieve. All of the moves must be performed with speed and grace or else the glass(es) may fall or the wine spilled. The dance was created by the men in Cyprus in a form of competition or as a means to impress a woman. Some of the moves are hard to be performed even by professionals. Tatsia requires the dancer to have stamina, full control of his hands and knowledge of the footwork of the dance.

 (Tatsia. Wikipedia.)

Love is certainly all of that -- a dance requiring expertise in balance and control. Performing a beautiful dance of love is inherent in our being but very tough to master in forms of its art. "Thin" and "silky" describes the relation to the love presented and received by the person. Some of the moves of Tatsia are very difficult to be performed even by professionals. Tatsia requires the dancer to have stamina, full control of his hands and knowledge of the footwork of the dance. A beautiful analogy to being and staying in love -- held best by those with constant practice and controlled grace. One must practice love daily and uphold its ultimate goal in life. Very few reach enlightenment.

Once again: "My love for you is never-ending and without condition." 

I pray these words strike you as they did me when I composed them. The things we are bound and committed to love begin with our first heartbeat. I see my God as a master of my lifelong class, teaching me how to perfect my "love dance tatsia" in a world filled with hatred and misunderstanding. We all must exercise the ultimate gift of love from above, and it is we who must relieve love from all its restrictive, horrid conditions. 

Love is perfection --  the one thing in the entire universe that is entirely perfect. And being such means it must hold everything within it – both good and evil, both beauty and ugliness, both peace and war. It is up to each of us to fight that evil foe and allow ourselves to love ... compromise, excusal, forgiveness, all are heavenly traits. We must accept them without condition to experience this tender, passionate affection. It is truly the only hope for mankind. I pray "Amen" without end.

Love’s Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—

See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

 --Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

* The poem promulgates one of the oldest arguments of a swain to a maid: “All the world is in intimate contact – water, wind, mountains, moonbeams, even flowers. What about you?” Since “Nothing in the world is single,” he says with multiple examples, “What is all this sweet work worth / If thou kiss not me?” 

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