Entry for April 9, 2005
Forget what the clock at the end of the entry says, it was slightly past midnight when I began this. That being said, and for no real purpose, on with the entry.
It has often occurred to me that no matter what, no human can live alone. Though self-reliance and personal strength are highly crucial to our own survival and mental well-being, we similarly need other people. Often there is too much emphasis placed on the importance of either, when in truth it is the balance that needs to be struck that elicits the most stability and happiness within a person. I mention this because I realized the other day that I rely too much on myself, and not enough on other people. When I say rely, I don't necessarily mean in achieving all your own tasks, I more importantly mean confiding the inner workings of your soul, your relation to others, your own attempts at finding just where you fit into the jigsaw puzzle that is life.
In its purest form, love is the most powerful, life-shattering or life-elevating of all the relationships and relations that one human being can have with another. It is virtually impossible to truly define love, for I think that more than we can know, the essence of love surpasses our existence here and transcends to some eternal forum where things such as love are all that can exist. But for us humans, love is the thing of movies, of dreams, of the media, of video games, of everything. All things tie in to love at some point, even if not in the contemporary fashion which we would think it would.
To me (and this just my interpretation of what love is), love is this feeling, that though it may be strained and even hurt by the various pains and things in life, can never truly end. Between people, life may push them away, but love would never truly end, if it truly existed. I think love is justice in its own ultimate form. Love should not be necessarily correlated with intimcay or marriage, because love has many forms. I define love as feeling so strongly for someone else that your survival no longer matters during your interactions with them. Their survival becomes more important than yours, and even if this is not consciously comprehended, true love is always indicative that something in someone's mind has taken a glimpse beyond the confines of this world, and has thus been forever changed by it.
I'm not sure if I can say I truly know or understand love. To me, the ultimate love is when Eternity, though possessing all-encompassing existence and power, and needing nothing to define its existence, created a universe/realm/sub-existence where it even allowed life the capacity to hate Eternity. To create something knowing it may not understand things, that it may not appreciate creation, and that it may not treat others equally, basically, that the things in that creation will be flawed and imperfect, is the ultimate form of love. It was a total act of selflessness. If Eternity is eternal, then it is necessary that Eternity be supremely powerful. The embodiment of ultimate power is not needing anyone else, but Eternity decided to create something else anyways, sacrificing a part of its existence and thought to allow us to exist. That is a love that I cannot even begin to understand, but a love that I hope and pray that I may one day understand. The wonderful thing to me is that Eternity has decided to allow us to one day become eternal, and in becoming eternal, we become a part of the Eternity that created us. In doing so, we not only understand Its love, we become Its love. As we are today we are a product of Its love, Eternity's love made manifest.
I feel like I have a small grasp of this dimension of love. Love is moving beyond your own needs; it is the ultimate good and the definition of perfection. I have loved other people, familial love, but I am not sure if I have loved beyond the confines of my family structure. Maybe I do - it's hard to tell. I've never known anyone long enough to develop a true understanding of the dynamics of my relationships with them. With regards of intimacy and love with a potential or true soulmate, my experience is zero. I have never dated, or held a relationship in that aspect. It is one of my greatest faults in life, with regards to being a sociable human being, but it has given me time to think.
To a degree, however, I am tired of thinking. I'll admit that I am desperate for a soulmate relationship that at times is almost unbearable. This is a terrible weakness for me because it has the potential to put me into bad relationship situations. It may make me hopelessly attached to the first female who says they love me, or who I feel loves me, and I worry about being in such a way. The biggest hindrance to my having relationships is my own inaction. I just don't live too much in certain aspects. For some reason, I resigned long ago, leaving the game of life to watch from the hillside. Now I cheer on those who play, taking every risk, enjoying every gain, mourning each loss, but loving it all the same. In becoming a spectator I have lost one of the greatest dimensions of life, one that I can not really label, but that I understand in the depths of my mind. I won't try to explain it here; that would take too long, and could be the topic of another entry.
The important thing to understand here is this: nothing in life can be achieved through observing. It is through experience that we develop an appreciation of the differences in life. It is the same as color: we cannot appreciate red until we know blue, and it is only through seeing the whole of the color spectrum that we begin to understand just how amazing color can be.
I feel like I have come to understand many things about love. In truth, I may understand nothing, but conceptualizing is one thing I'm always willing to take risks with. But my lack of having truly related or fully opened myself to any other human being hinders me in ways I am only just beginning to realize. I cannot understand the full dimensions of love in this world until I have sampled and savored all of its variations. If life were a dinner, I would have skipped the more complex and strong-flavored foods in favor of a small few blands one. And though all things are interesting at first, the bland ones lose potency over time, until they no longer matter. If you draw nothing else from this issue, I hope it's this: don't be inactive in life - you'll have all of eternity to understand certain things, but for now, just enjoy being alive.
"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."
Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Reading and Writing"German philosopher (1844 - 1900). If love is madness, then I need to stop being so sane. With that, I bid thee good night.
It has often occurred to me that no matter what, no human can live alone. Though self-reliance and personal strength are highly crucial to our own survival and mental well-being, we similarly need other people. Often there is too much emphasis placed on the importance of either, when in truth it is the balance that needs to be struck that elicits the most stability and happiness within a person. I mention this because I realized the other day that I rely too much on myself, and not enough on other people. When I say rely, I don't necessarily mean in achieving all your own tasks, I more importantly mean confiding the inner workings of your soul, your relation to others, your own attempts at finding just where you fit into the jigsaw puzzle that is life.
In its purest form, love is the most powerful, life-shattering or life-elevating of all the relationships and relations that one human being can have with another. It is virtually impossible to truly define love, for I think that more than we can know, the essence of love surpasses our existence here and transcends to some eternal forum where things such as love are all that can exist. But for us humans, love is the thing of movies, of dreams, of the media, of video games, of everything. All things tie in to love at some point, even if not in the contemporary fashion which we would think it would.
To me (and this just my interpretation of what love is), love is this feeling, that though it may be strained and even hurt by the various pains and things in life, can never truly end. Between people, life may push them away, but love would never truly end, if it truly existed. I think love is justice in its own ultimate form. Love should not be necessarily correlated with intimcay or marriage, because love has many forms. I define love as feeling so strongly for someone else that your survival no longer matters during your interactions with them. Their survival becomes more important than yours, and even if this is not consciously comprehended, true love is always indicative that something in someone's mind has taken a glimpse beyond the confines of this world, and has thus been forever changed by it.
I'm not sure if I can say I truly know or understand love. To me, the ultimate love is when Eternity, though possessing all-encompassing existence and power, and needing nothing to define its existence, created a universe/realm/sub-existence where it even allowed life the capacity to hate Eternity. To create something knowing it may not understand things, that it may not appreciate creation, and that it may not treat others equally, basically, that the things in that creation will be flawed and imperfect, is the ultimate form of love. It was a total act of selflessness. If Eternity is eternal, then it is necessary that Eternity be supremely powerful. The embodiment of ultimate power is not needing anyone else, but Eternity decided to create something else anyways, sacrificing a part of its existence and thought to allow us to exist. That is a love that I cannot even begin to understand, but a love that I hope and pray that I may one day understand. The wonderful thing to me is that Eternity has decided to allow us to one day become eternal, and in becoming eternal, we become a part of the Eternity that created us. In doing so, we not only understand Its love, we become Its love. As we are today we are a product of Its love, Eternity's love made manifest.
I feel like I have a small grasp of this dimension of love. Love is moving beyond your own needs; it is the ultimate good and the definition of perfection. I have loved other people, familial love, but I am not sure if I have loved beyond the confines of my family structure. Maybe I do - it's hard to tell. I've never known anyone long enough to develop a true understanding of the dynamics of my relationships with them. With regards of intimacy and love with a potential or true soulmate, my experience is zero. I have never dated, or held a relationship in that aspect. It is one of my greatest faults in life, with regards to being a sociable human being, but it has given me time to think.
To a degree, however, I am tired of thinking. I'll admit that I am desperate for a soulmate relationship that at times is almost unbearable. This is a terrible weakness for me because it has the potential to put me into bad relationship situations. It may make me hopelessly attached to the first female who says they love me, or who I feel loves me, and I worry about being in such a way. The biggest hindrance to my having relationships is my own inaction. I just don't live too much in certain aspects. For some reason, I resigned long ago, leaving the game of life to watch from the hillside. Now I cheer on those who play, taking every risk, enjoying every gain, mourning each loss, but loving it all the same. In becoming a spectator I have lost one of the greatest dimensions of life, one that I can not really label, but that I understand in the depths of my mind. I won't try to explain it here; that would take too long, and could be the topic of another entry.
The important thing to understand here is this: nothing in life can be achieved through observing. It is through experience that we develop an appreciation of the differences in life. It is the same as color: we cannot appreciate red until we know blue, and it is only through seeing the whole of the color spectrum that we begin to understand just how amazing color can be.
I feel like I have come to understand many things about love. In truth, I may understand nothing, but conceptualizing is one thing I'm always willing to take risks with. But my lack of having truly related or fully opened myself to any other human being hinders me in ways I am only just beginning to realize. I cannot understand the full dimensions of love in this world until I have sampled and savored all of its variations. If life were a dinner, I would have skipped the more complex and strong-flavored foods in favor of a small few blands one. And though all things are interesting at first, the bland ones lose potency over time, until they no longer matter. If you draw nothing else from this issue, I hope it's this: don't be inactive in life - you'll have all of eternity to understand certain things, but for now, just enjoy being alive.
"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."
Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Reading and Writing"German philosopher (1844 - 1900). If love is madness, then I need to stop being so sane. With that, I bid thee good night.
posted by Andrew McKenna at 9:07 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home