IT’S a Sunday afternoon and you are in a quiet neighbourhood restaurant. The food and the ambience were great and as you take a look around, something grips your attention. It is a quote by Socrates and advises whoever finds a good wife to marry her, because she would make him happy. Conversely, the great philosopher informs that the man who finds a bad wife would become a philosopher.
Humh! Was he talking from experience? Yes, he was. Scroll down memory lane and you find that Socrates did not have a happy marriage. Simply put, if you get something (heart) right from the outset, they you take it for granted; assume that it is a very simple or easy task. However, if you had to try, try and try again, you are definitely going to be better, wiser and more experienced from the lessons learnt.
Those who find love at first sight are calm and think they were the best in the pack. They were lucky having been spared of worries, deep emotional thoughts that subsequently led to nightmares, soliloquies and getting to the philosophical states of propounding emotional theories and fallacies.
Interestingly, Socrates is not alone. When it comes to the issue of relationships, some of our great philosophers are very sceptical. In their opinions, true love is unattainable and marriage is simply settling down with someone who might not be the best. Plato describes love as a serious mental disease and in another quote says, ‘At the touch of love every man becomes a poet’. On his part, Aristotle says that happiness depends upon ourselves and to love someone is to identify with them.
As you probe further, you discover that for the philosopher, the question “what is love?”continues to generate a host of issues. Love is an abstract noun, which means for some is unattached to anything real or sensible. That, interestingly, is all; for others, it is a means by which our being—our self and its world are irrevocably affected once we are ‘touched by love’. While some have sought to analyse it, others have preferred to leave it in the realm of the ineffable.
Love is often portrayed as a powerful force, something that can inspire greatness in the lover. Alternatively, it is something that can make the lover act like a fool. Love can be the greatest feeling in the world, but it can also be utterly devastating when it doesn’t work out.
Given these observations, we might be inclined to think that there’s a significant element of irrationality to love. But we should be careful here, as perhaps love can have reasons too. For example, if you have a significant other, you could probably list off a bunch of reasons for your love: your partner is kind, intelligent, funny, and so on. If you loved someone who was mean, stupid, and boring, that would be irrational. But, presumably, many of us have great reasons for loving who we love, which shows that sometimes love is actually quite rational.
It would be wise to pause, though, to consider whether or not we ever actually love for the reasons we give. Perhaps the truth is that we first find ourselves in love, and then come up with reasons to justify our feelings. Just because we can provide reasons for feeling the way we do about a particular person, it doesn’t follow that we see reasons for loving first, and then develop feelings based on those reasons.
While the philosophers have learnt great emotional lessons and taken a stand, a lot of people get stuck on the surface; they are therefore caught in the emotional web and often overact when things go sour. This often results in violence in relationships and recently you have lovebirds killing themselves, setting the people they claim to love ablaze and much more. The truth of the matter is that not all love can survive the test of the emotional times.
Every love script has two sides. The first side is the part that we all love to experience and talk about. Unfortunately, when we get to the flipside of love, it’s not always pleasant for many. Here, the sweet aroma of love that they once savoured goes sour, and the bitter aftertaste just won’t go away.
The sad part of the emotional bargain is that many often allow the feelings of devastation, anger and betrayal to fester and they find themselves spiralling into hate.
Experts interestingly inform that this hate is not the opposite of the love that you once felt for each other. Hate is an intense emotion that illustrates a very alive and well connection to another person. You are still bonded to this person, care what happens to him, good or bad, and you are preoccupied with things that are beyond your control.
The opposite of love at this stage here can be compared with indifference. Interestingly, you also have a group who are still physically together, patching things up, even though their hearts have fallen apart. Here, you find cases of emotional abuse. Though emotional abuse doesn’t leave physical scars, it can have a huge impact on your confidence and self-esteem.