Love

Love. That last unfathomable and incomprehensible mystery of man. So powerful that armies have been driven to war on its account, so transformational as to turn the most hardened criminals to pacifists, so all consuming as to drive men to illness and early graves, their wealth frittered away mindlessly in its pursuit. So dangerous that good men have killed, wise men become fools and friends become mortal enemies.
But of course, it’s all nonsense really. Isn’t it? It is just a chaotic, irrational mass of biological chemicals and hormones consuming the body’s psyche and evoking a somewhat arbitrary and yet transfixing state we’ve come to call “emotion.” And, surely, as reasoned and logical as our human intellect has permitted us to be, we can accept the inherent irrationality, the idiocy even of contemplating taking such whimsical and chance driven feelings at all seriously? Surely we are capable of sufficient self analysis as to realise the temporal, fluctuating and accidental nature of this bizarre and uninvited imposter we so confidently label “love?” It would seem not.
But I was being quite serious: it really is nonsense. At least, our notion of love is nonsense. Indeed, it has to be. One only has to look at the number of marriages which break down because couples “fall out of love” with each other or else look to the celebrity world, in particular, and note the frequency with which individuals are consumed with the insatiable intensity of “love” towards another only for the object of their desires to shift only a matter of months later. The explanation of hindsight is of course to simply claim never to have “loved” their previous romantic interest at all – and yet they remained convinced enough of it at the time!
Beyond the commoditised fantasy of the Hollywood romance or even the naive superficiality of celebrity culture I am at once struck by the inherent danger of this idea of love that we have become so fixated upon in Western culture. Given the, often uncharacteristic and perilous, lengths individuals will go to in the name of this apparently indefinable thing called love, it is little wonder that individuals who succumb to its seductive lure are not forcibly restrained, kept under lock and key and forbidden for any form of human interaction until this hallucinatory state, this possession has lifted. It is both chilling and sickening that imperative decisions are made, unions forged and even deaths incurred because of this abstract and unquantifiable four letter word.
If this is really love, I for one wish to have no part in it. If this is love, it is perhaps the most dangerous, debilitating and hazardous thing human beings have ever had the misfortune to be laden with. Evoking maniacal behaviour, obsession, anger, violence, jealously and deceit amongst a catalogue of other vices, it is so toxic we had better feed ourselves upon almost every form of recreational narcotic going before selecting “love” from the shelf!
Thankfully of course, non of what I have taken such pains to describe is love at all. It doesn’t even come close. True love is neither fluctuating nor is it temporal nor, do I believe, is it arbitrary. Of crucial significance however is that it most certainly is definable.
Probably the greatest lie to have beguiled modern man is the notion that love is a feeling. It is not. That is not to say that love does not manifest itself through feelings and that it doesn’t evoke human emotion but love itself is not a feeling. The possibility that love might be truly little more than an involuntary emotional reflex utterly terrifies me, chiefly because it means we have absolutely no say, no input or element of self determination, regarding who we love. We are paralysed therefore; rendered utterly powerless by the fluctuating state of our tumultuous emotional interior. That is not a state of affairs I am at ease with at all.
I approach this, inevitably, from a perspective underpinned with Christian teaching and little wonder therefore that I am at once drawn to Jesus’ commands to “love your neighbour” and still further to “love your enemies.” How, precisely, does one achieve, particularly this latter directive, if love is simply a sensation over which I have almost no control?
I make this point so vehemently because I firmly believe that it is this deeply flawed understanding of love that is at the root of so much of contemporary societies ills. Both Hollywood and the media only exacerbate this addiction to such a self indulgent, consumerist and worryingly intangible notion of love and, surprise, surprise, Joe Public has subscribed to the fantasy wholeheartedly and without reservation or scepticism. That is, until it all goes wrong – and it invariably does!
There is already too much that has been said by way of defining love and so I do not wish to add to these largely sentimentalised and problematic ideas. To my mind the closest thing we have to a definitive definition of this apparently so abstract concept can be found in Paul’s writings to the Corinthians in the New Testament of the Bible – 1 Corinthians 13.
What I will say with all confidence is that love is not a feeling, rather it is an act of the will. Love is an intention, it is a decision, it is a conscious and deliberate choice. Undoubtedly love manifests itself in differing ways and no-one would wish to suggest that romantic love, motherly love or friendship love don’t hold there own distinct and unique qualities, however each must be founded upon a principle of intention, or else they have no foundation at all. Relationships of all kinds might be better served and so much human pain and suffering averted if only we would desist from our absolution of responsibility to a whimsical and largely disappointing definition of love.
The reality is quite far removed from the glossy magazines, the Richard Curtis rom-com and the fairy tale literature, all of which, I’m afraid to say, are little more than mirages on the social landscape. Real love? Well, I learnt that one from a man who decided to allow himself to be murdered most brutally and barbarically all for the sake of a people who mocked him, disowned him, ridiculed and cursed him. I don’t think feelings really came into that one!