The importance of 'loving' as a verb.

[Nathalie L 112512]

I may be cynical when I say that very rarely is the beloved more than a shaping spirit for the lover's dream. And perhaps such a thing is enough. To be a muse may be enough. The pain is when the dreams change, as they do, as they must. Suddenly the enchanted city fades and you are left alone again in the windy desert. As for your beloved, she didn't understand you. The truth is, you never understood yourself."

- from "Sexing the Cherry" By Jeanette Winterson

 

I think we all fall prey to this, at various points in our life. We are all constantly changing, and it is important we always give the people in our lives the opportunity to fall in love with us over and over again (be they friends, family, or lovers). 'Loving' is a verb, after all.

 

We also need to make sure that we do not grow so attached to people that we do not allow them the latitude necessary to change, and become whoever it is they want to be in that present moment. Just thought I would share my thoughts on such a beautiful passage...

 

What kind of experiences have you all had, that reinforce, or conversely, that contradict, this passage?

[Winnipegcub 21293]

My most cherished beloved have in fact been far from my dream. For they are based on me and my own limitations. My beloved take me to a place I could have never imagined. They allow me to feel free yet challenge myself and ultimately help me grow. Cub

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[Malika Fantasy 144625]

Love...sometime I wish that word wasn't even a word. That all those emotions were only an illusion of reality....in term of experience...I don't know if I want to say lucky or unlucky...in my life I have love two persons over limit...one was ma official ex-boyfriend, he became violent(long story) but before that I did love him...and someone that I know for over 2 years now...

 

We never officially dated, but I know for a fact that he did love me, probably not as much as I did him...we did connect to a lot of level, that most people would found really strange, but...he did understand me. He saw the inside of me, without me telling or asking, and this for me mean the world...

 

 

Love...I am French, we don't have the difference in French between love and like...at this precise moment of my life I do like someone that for mean a lot...He know that I am an SP, he know me personally, more then most people, I don't know what he feel for me, but from what I can hear he isn't indifferent...he make me weak on my knees, that for me is a sign:)

 

Loving someone for the first time is acknowledging the fact that you may be hurt beyond limits. The fact of actually loving someone is, really painful, because you open up, and unless that person really accept you, it will hurt, one day or another

[VedaSloan 119179]

Part of the amazing journey that being human is, is growing, and changing. If we stayed the same, how boring.

 

One of the things I'm always saying to my partner is that I love him because he keeps me on my toes. He's never routine, or boring. He's always surprising me.

[Old Dog 179138]

I believe that we all have this dream of finding that perfect soul mate, that person who completes us. But as it has been so eloquently put "As for your beloved, she didn't understand you. The truth is, you never understood yourself." - the person you are and the person you are bound to become may not necessarily be the person that can love or be loved by the person your soul mate becomes.

 

Love has so many variables. Passion, belief, comfort, accommodation, respect, compassion, perseverance, devotion, trust... the list goes on and on. You never know which one is most important to you until it is altered or eliminated.

 

We idealize. We compartmentalize. We rationalize. We do everything we can to capture that elusive thing called love.

 

Love is capricious... it will never conform to expectation.

Love is rapacious... it takes your entire being by force.

 

I embrace it... cautiously. I know the absolute euphoria of love; it intoxicates and overwhelms. I also know the absolute desolation of love lost; it tears at the fibres of your soul, it rends your heart into a million pieces.

 

That, to me, is love.

[frenchbrute 1090]

This is typically a subject which I would stay away from in the past. Yes, I am of course not the foremost expert on the subject of personal intimate relationships or love but based of Ms. Lefevre's expended definition made to include friendships & family I feel that I am more then comfortable sharing a few experiences.

 

I was never sure in the past that there is a specific situation and way in which a person could describe or explain an expression of love or how you demonstrate a complete devotion & giving of yourself to another person. a few years ago my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She had never previosuly been sick for a long period of time. My father was a businessman and on the road for over 25 years and almost never home. When my mother became sick he stayed at hom. He cancelled eveyrthing he had going on to go with her to doctors, hospitals, check-ups, etc...he walked with her until she could no more, listened to her stories about years past, brought her to see special places she hadn't been to in years, picked up her favorite foods from all over the place, brought her to see people she hadn't seen in years.

 

Over the years dad's career had always come first and foremost as he was the only one working. For the first time in years he gave up everything for her. He was somewhat lost as he was was doing things he had never done and felt he had lost control, but for some reason he seemed to like giving her all the attention that she deserved. When it became more obvious that mom needed somebody wround the clock with her and that she was sicker than most thought, she only wanted "him" with her and nobody else. Although some of us around them felt insulted that she would only want him, we also struggled to understand why.

 

On the last day, Dad, at that point had noe been awake for 5 days straight with no sleep, little food, all cried out out of energy, he was lying on the bed next to her holding her hand as she took her last breath. He literally gave her what she wanted all the way to the end. Her biggest fear was to pass alone and without anybody and he didnt want to let that happen to her. When the doctor(yes one who made a housecall) came and got me to see her to say a final goodbye, I saw the way he was holding her hand. As the doctor was telling me that she had been gone for about an hour, he shed one single tear and said that he didnt want to let her hand go as it felt like letting her go. After a few mintues as a family together looking at her, I looked at him and finally got it!

 

I would have to qualify that scene there as the ultmate expression of love. Call me selfish, old fashioned, what have you, I for myself want to experience this in my life time. No matter how long it takes to find that person everyone should have the opportunity to experience the feeling of having somebody"only want them" in the room! I hope this is somewhat what Ms Lefevre was looking for.

[SamanthaEvans 166766]

Love is everything. It is our motivator and goal, our beginning and end, our reason and means for acting. When we feel loved, we feel confirmed as persons: recognized, met, accepted. Love nourishes and sustains us. By love, we celebrate what is lovely and we deplore what is not. The best of us will search loveless places and unloved people to find love in them and to express love for them. There is something to love everywhere, in everyone, though only loving people see it.

 

Pain and fear are not the worst things in life. The worst is to feel that we are not loved because in that radical isolation, pain, fear and every loss intensify unbearably. But when we know we are loved, there is clear light and fresh air, we're filled with hope and a renewed sense of possibility that becomes a creative drive. Pain becomes manageable; sometimes it vanishes. Fear evaporates. The losses we suffer open us to discover new opportunities to love and to be loved again.

 

There are different kinds of love. Motherly love is fierce and self-sacrificing. Fatherly love is strong and protective. The love between siblings, friends and neighbours sustains communities. Erotic love is the force of creative, vital nature. Hatred is love informed by anger which is, in turn, infused with fear and grief. Apathy, not hatred, is the antithesis of love, yet love is the only cure for both. The greatest love is indelible and ineffable: it binds souls together, transcends time and space, and it is stronger than death.

 

Love judges only by its own measure. Love shines its light into all the dark corners of our being. The greatest condemnation is not to love. The paradox of love is that, unlike most things we value, to have more of it we must give it. The surest remedy when we feel we are not loved, or not loved enough, is to love more and to love more freely.

 

Love is not a commodity. It is the ultimate reality, the ground of our being. Love is God and without love there is nothing good or godly. Love is the only thing that matters.

[Nathalie L 112512]

Love...I am French, we don't have the difference in French between love and like...at this precise moment of my life I do like someone that for mean a lot...He know that I am an SP, he know me personally, more then most people, I don't know what he feel for me, but from what I can hear he isn't indifferent...he make me weak on my knees, that for me is a sign:)

 

The only difference I've ever found is between "love" and "adore". Je t'aime, je t'adore. There is a slight nuance there. However, I've always found it hard to express my feelings for people in French, precisely for that reason.

 

"Je t'apprecie, et j'aime ta presence dans ma vie" is the closest I've come.

[Malika Fantasy 144625]

The only difference I've ever found is between "love" and "adore". Je t'aime, je t'adore. There is a slight nuance there. However, I've always found it hard to express my feelings for people in French, precisely for that reason.

 

"Je t'apprecie, et j'aime ta presence dans ma vie" is the closest I've come.

 

J'adore just doesn'T seem right to me in term of "love" or feeling, it doesn't have the same impact. Apprécier is the closest to the word like I believe....but it just doesn't sound the same again. More like friendship

[Studio 110 by Sophia 150333]

I would encourage you to read Plato's Symposium on love. It is Rather dry reading but very insightful on matters of love. Agape( sp?) or Eros? It basically concludes that we are attracted the people we love with the premis that they hold something in their character that we so badly want to be represented in our own lives that we lack. I know this to be true for me, as I am not the most organized person, but yet my lover's seem to be meticulous in their organization. So in this way I get to have the orgaisation repersented in my life.

[etasman2000 15994]

It basically concludes that we choose the people we love with the idea that they hold something in their character that we so badly want to be represented in our own lives that we lack.

 

Opposite complements is the 'modern' term for it.

 

Samantha's Discourse pretty much sums up my thoughts on it: eros, agape, philia, and storge to borrow from Lewis.

 

We also need to make sure that we do not grow so attached to people that we do not allow them the latitude necessary to change, and become whoever it is they want to be in that present moment.

 

Sometimes it isn't our attachment to other people as they are but our ideal of who they can be.

 

There is also a delicate balance between allowing them space for growth and guiding the growth. e.g. if a lover is growing into someone destructive do we stand back and watch or guide them towards another path ?

[Nathalie L 112512]

Sometimes it isn't our attachment to other people as they are but our ideal of who they can be.

 

There is also a delicate balance between allowing them space for growth and guiding the growth. e.g. if a lover is growing into someone destructive do we stand back and watch or guide them towards another path ?

 

That's very true. I sometime wonder whether people love a 'potential', or love who that person is in that particular moment. To love potential seems really problematic. What if it's potential you judge by your own standards? The attachment to that narrative of who they 'could' be has the potential to hinder their personal growth (as they see fit).

 

I understand what you mean about a destructive path though. Ultimately, we need to be supportive, and people won't change unless they truly want to (the change needs to come from them!)

[jafo105 39057]

This is a very deep thread. I like it. :icon_smile:

[Old Dog 179138]

J'adore just doesn'T seem right to me in term of "love" or feeling, it doesn't have the same impact. Apprécier is the closest to the word like I believe....but it just doesn't sound the same again. More like friendship

 

Hmmmm... maybe like "le weekend" you could just make it "je te love."

[mrrnice2 157005]

"The pain is when the dreams change, as they do, as they must."

 

How true Nathalie. Dreams change, realities change, and having never truly thought ahead to an inevitable future, the pain of loss has been and is crushing. How can one have so long deceived themselves about and ignored an ultimate reality?

 

While being in that enchanted city with my lover the love did evolve. The initially raw passion. The initial years of being and acting as one. The change when children arrived, understanding that the love was still there but no longer focused solely on each other, and the requirement to accept that from a partner. Later, the love of solitary, quiet times together, the familiarity sometimes allowing conversation without words, but 'knowing', merely with thought and manner. The evolution of each of us as individuals, with mutual support for each other - careers, friends and interests, but always we were 'us'. And then a different kind of love grew. The children growing up and finding their own loves and moving out to share them. And for us, time together again, acting as one. The assured confidence in each other, that regardless of anything, we were together, always. Always love, but always changing. We were so fortunate, as we did fall in love over and over as life changed.

 

But, "The pain is when the dreams change, as they do, as they must."

 

"Suddenly the enchanted city fades and you are left alone again in the windy desert. As for your beloved, she didn't understand you. The truth is, you never understood yourself."

 

She understood.

 

But now I recognize that I maybe never did understand myself, as the author has stated. It has been an incredible insight into something that I never appreciated before. Alone leaves one floundering with my new understanding that it was my wife that ultimately gave a meaning to virtually everything that I did.

 

And now? Love will not disappear, yet evolve again in its own way. My daughters and I are closer than at any other time ever in our lives. A pretty special love, but again, a different one.

 

Thanks for the passage, and yes, it brings sadness, but also great joy to stop and remind myself just how fortunate I have been in my life - how fortunate WE were in life.

 

I wonder what love has yet in store? That thought scares me to my very core.

[etasman2000 15994]

That's very true. I sometime wonder whether people love a 'potential', or love who that person is in that particular moment. To love potential seems really problematic. What if it's potential you judge by your own standards? The attachment to that narrative of who they 'could' be has the potential to hinder their personal growth (as they see fit).

 

I understand what you mean about a destructive path though. Ultimately, we need to be supportive, and people won't change unless they truly want to (the change needs to come from them!)

 

There are Guides who learn to see the potential in others and have the compassion and patience to lead them to that potential. It is true Guides can not force, only setup the necessary conditions for the growth to occur.

 

There is the whole slew of problems that come along with it, one as you mentioned, by whom's standards, the other an attachment of what may be and the lack of appreciation for what is. A valuable Guide is one who knows their own limits and biases.

 

Finally I agree, change is always an internal affair.