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The Nature of Love
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The Nature of Love |
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Wesley the Blue Member
since 1999-09-02
Posts 426Forest Lake, MN, USA |
I wrote this shortly after the end of a long relationship. I came back to it just recently and find that it still holds true now, at the beginning of a new and wonderful relationship. ******** What is love? No one really knows. Well they might know, but they find it impossible to put into words. I have heard it described many different ways. As a burning sensation, like your world is on fire, like everything around you blazes in a wondrous glory. I have also had it described to me as an unquenchable thirst for someone, you want to devote all of your time and energy to them, with them, and for them. The fact that you are probably not understanding this very well is just an example of what I am talking about. Every one has their own definition of love. You can almost grasp what the other person is talking about when someone tries to describe it, but something, some aspect of it escapes your comprehension. I believe I have experienced love. Your probably asking, “well how do you define it then?” I will give you my answer, or attempt to anyway. You wont understand it completely, but you might be able to get the general gist of what it feels like to me. If I were going to try to define love, to take it and tack it down so that you could have a good look at it, and believe me, I have tried to explain it before, I would do it in three ways. I would use Devotion, Desire, and Wholeness. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what I mean right now, I will explain them shortly, though it may take a while. I will start with Devotion because it is the simplest and easiest to understand. Devotion, as I see it, is you willingness to do anything for the object of your love. How much would you sacrifice for it before it becomes too much. These sacrifices usually are in monetary terms, which are but a pittance if you are unwilling to sacrifice more. One of the other small sacrifices is time, although if you view it as a “sacrifice” to spend time with you loved one, you are nowhere close to feeling love. There are other sacrifices to be made in the name of love. They are on a gradient scale ranging from small, like time and money, to larger ones, like friends and family. Would you be willing, should the choice be forced, to choose the one you love, over your friends or family members. The greatest sacrifice of all however, is life. Unless you are willing to put the object of you devotion before yourself, and give everything up, even your own existence, you do not know love as I see it. The devotion of love is, “the one you love, before everything.” period, end of story. The second part is Desire. Like before, there are different levels to desire. One of them, and probably the first one that went through your mind, was the physical. I will be the first to admit that there is not much in this world to compare with seeing the object of your desire, nude, totally exposed before you and being paralyzed with awe. But desire goes much beyond the simple physical. You desire to spend all of your time with her. You desire to see her eyes sparkle with excitement. You desire to hear her heart beating next to yours. But the most important desire, the one that is the end all and be all of your little life, is her happiness. This part goes along with devotion and sacrifice. Not only do you desire her happiness, you desire it above your own. To see her happy, you would give up what made you happy, even if that meant letting her go. That is the desire of love. The final part, Wholeness, is the most difficult to explain. It deals purely with feeling and not with anything physical or quantifiable. It is a very strange, but a very wonderful feeling. Throughout life, we all search for something. If its not success, its money, if its not money, its fame, if its not fame its something else. The strange part about love is, that once you find it, none of that matters any more. You feel so complete that were the world going to end tomorrow, the only complaint you would have is that you didn’t get more time to explore your love. The feeling that you are a caged animal, that there is something else out there that you have yet to find, disappears. Love either opens the cage and sets you free, or makes the cage everything that you need and more. Which one it is doesn’t really matter. For once in your life, you are contented, calm, relaxed. The cold, empty, feeling right in the center of your chest, the one that lets you know you are alone, is gone, almost like it never existed. The days are lived moment to wonderful moment, each lasting a blissful eternity. And at night, the warmth of her body, the feel of her skin touching your skin, the sounds of her rhythmic breathing, lull you into a drifting aimless sleep. That is the contentedness, the wholeness of love. I don’t know if this made any sense to you, and it doesn’t matter anyway. If you have experienced love, you know it, and would describe it differently in any case. Keith W. Mullin every day is a new day with which we can change the world |
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| © Copyright 2001 Keith W. Mullin - All Rights Reserved | |||
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Dawn Eclipse Senior Member
since 2000-01-31
Posts 637The Horsehead Nebula |
Ok, you want critiques?? i got one for yah.. read your story again. there's a few wording errors... but other than that, looks good. nice idea. I can see some of it quite easily. nicely written. "Forget regret, or life is yours to miss. No other course, no other way... No day but today" ~Broadway Musical RENT~ *Cassandra Roseen* |
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Dusk Treader
Moderator
Senior Member
since 1999-06-18
Posts 1187St. Paul, MN |
Excellent essay on love, Keith. Many very valid points. All you need is to strike a balance between those three. Great piece of writing. "And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind - is, in the end, Hell" - C.S. Lewis |
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fractal007 Senior Member
since 2000-06-01
Posts 1958 |
Interesting read, Keith. It seems that there are many definitions of love. I liked the somewhat casual style of your writing here. "If history is to change, let it change. If the world is to be destroyed, so be it. If my fate is to die, I must simply laugh" -- Magus |
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