What is love…….
What is love, ?is it a feeling, ? is it an emotion or what. In trying to define love, we are dealing with one of the most powerful and most misused term in the world. Love is so powerful, we say “God is love”.
Love is highest expression of the human mind and soul. Love is a unconditional acceptance of another which empowers us to “decide” to nurture that person’s growth in order heal all wounds. This definition begs for explanation. First is that this definition is conceptual and arises from my direct observation and analysis of human behavior, it also implies that you can have a better definition. Secondly this definition contains words that needs to be explained further.
DECISION- UNCONDITIONAL- EMPOWER- NURTURE- HEAL-By the use of the word decision, it implies choice, we chose to love, we are not forced to love and we cannot stop loving once we have started. We do not fall in love, if you fall in love, you will fall out of love sooner than later, falling in love is nothing but sexually oriented infatuation which subsides once the sexual desire has been gratified and the true knowledge of the character strength and weakness of the beloved starts to show itself if the friendship lasts long enough.
By the use of decision, it implies love is not a feeling neither is it an emotion though love has an emotion, an emotion built from association with the beloved. For us to understand this better, lets examine feeling and emotions.
Feeling come from a German root word furlen which related to a Latin word palpari meaning “to stroke”. Feelings are the sensation we get from any of the sensory input channels – eyes, ears, nose, mouth and skin (touch). Feeling are instant response to sensational input, this does not mean they will last, they are very unstable and can change every minute in addition to the fact that feeling can deceive us. We find the deceptive nature of our feeling in cases like when a man sees a pyramid neatly packed in a bra and think its glorious….wait until that bra goes off then the eyes will see the true nature of what is hidden in the bra, then and only then can he decide if he likes what he sees or not. A lady can see a guy with six packs and he thinks he has any sense of integrity upstairs ….wait until he will pestle you worse than a village woman pounding yam then you will realize this six pack is actually a symbol of savagery and ignorance. A man can be fumbling with a lady because he has large size pyramids and she is happy that he likes her, wait until you breastfeed two babies and that pyramid becomes loyal then you will know if he will touch it again or his feeling will arise for a new sweet 16 with erect nipple living down the block.
We are not animals hence our supreme task as humans is to control our feeling so it does not lead us into disaster. Feeling lead to disaster, like when she is saying “no” but his touches is unbearable and she cannot move away cos she is enjoying the feeling then it leads to sex and heartbreak and pain. When you see a person and you feel strong loving or romantic sensation, the most appropriate thing to do is not to act on this but to examine this feeling in the light of knowledge, need and aspiration.
Emotions are of another order to feeling, feeling are instant reactions to stimuli while emotions are the reservoir of perception, association, ideas and judgment we draw from events. The ugly thing about emotion is that just like feeling, we are apt to have incorrect or inaccurate emotions of events. When we say perception and association, let us use the illustration of a lady whose lacks the knowledge required to build a relationship but dabbles into one and handles it badly this leads to the end of the relationship. Or the relationship can come to an end because they (the both) of them do not know how to handle the challenges of interpersonal relationship or the challenges of a love affair. Lets say he like sex too much but she does not like it, this leads to quarrels which later culminates in the ending of the relationship. After this, she may perceive that all men want is sex, now this is using a single case to judge millions of people-she may be wrong but the perception sticks. This builds up as an emotion in her and for the rest of her life, she will have the impression that all men want is sex so even when a man that is worse than her in that department (like if he has a believe that all women want is money and material things ) comes along, she will not give him a change to prove himself. She will apply her emotional judgement to him and maybe chase him away before he has the opportunity to show himself.
“All men are the same”, “All women want is money” , “Men think from their snakes”
“Women are difficult to handle”
All these and many more are associations created from single events or a couple of mismanaged emotions. For us to understand the true nature of emotions, let us examine a part of the brain called amygdala. This part of the brain is responsible for storing memories we associate with events, the funny thing about the amygdala is that once it gets any clue from the environment in regards to similar event of the past, it stimulates the emotional response we associate with that event in the past rather than a clear rational response to it, e.g, if you had a partner who beats you to a pulp and that partner uses a particular kind of perfume, the amygdala associates that perfume with beating and the feeling you get when you are beaten so 10 years after that bad relationship has ended, if you were with someone and you perceive that same perfume which your barbarian woman beater used, you will automatically experience all the emotions you associate with beating, this will pose a serious challenge because if this new person is trying to win your heart then it will near to impossible for him. You may even find yourself wanting to accept him but when the amygdala fires (normally it hijacks your reasoning), you find yourself distancing from this new person. This happens to us all the time, with music, with tone of voice, with looks, with names, with attitude and a host of other items. Sometimes this is responsible for why some people cannot resist others, sometimes just a touch from another melts their heart or turns them on. Some find themselves unable to leave a destructive relationship because of this, e.g. you may date a man named Michael who was so nice to you you loved him with all you had then the relationship ended for whatever reasons. Tomorrow you may meet somebody else named Michael and you may not like him as a person but because you associate good feeling with the name Michael, you will find yourself unable to resist this guy, you may even present yourself for him and trust guys, he will read the clue and dive you. You may find yourself in a relationship with him and even when he is everything you hate in a person, you will not be able to leave him. This is because you still cling to the idea that Michaels are good and you are hoping this Michael will magically change and become what you expect him to be.
Emotions come from negative and positive judgment as well. As a young girl, all the stories you may have heard from adults about relationship are full of lying men, beater, cheats and many more, though these ladies will not tell of their own infidelity and negative traits, you may then judge men to be bad and decide that no man will have you……….this can even go on to cause a lady to be frigid.
By the use of the word decision, it implies we don’t fall in love, falling in love is usually sexually oriented. As individuals we always have a mental picture of who we think will be most suitable for us, for some it’s the physical qualities that dominate the list, she must be fair, tall, heavy pyramids, size finish backside etc. he must be tall, handsome, dresses fine, uses a jeep and many other senseless qualities that has no real importance for true love to grow. As we cruise our daily activities our minds is scanning the environment for people with these matches and once we see someone with a quarter of these, we fall in love with this person. For some people this need does not go beyond a suitable sexual partner and once we scan out anybody who we think will fulfill the need we fall in love with her. For some men they like them young and immature so they can control her like a puppet, so once they see a young innocent girl they fall madly in love but the truth is that this kind of love suffocates and leaves no room for personal growth. If a guy is in this kind of relationship, he lives just to satisfy his sexual desire and he will cajole threaten or use his logical superiority to make the girl feel guilty if she does not give in to his need. It does not occur to him that this girl has a future to build which he is meant to assist in from the wealth of his strength and wisdom. Because growth is not an ingredient of falling in love, the lovers make desperate effort to change the beloved, to change him/her not because it is good for them but because it suits the lover or makes him feel better. This does not mean that lovers should not change each other, it means that the process of influencing a change is a learned art and should be done with great wisdom, even when a change is suggested and the lover does not or cannot change, you do not stop loving, because, love is unconditional.
Unconditional acceptance is the foundation of true love.
?how. We must accept a person for whom s/he is, we are not saints, people are at different stages of growth, this means we have good and bad sides. To love someone successfully you need to know the person for all his strength and weakness then decide to live peacefully with that persons weakness. People do not change easily even when the process of change is initiated, it may never be successful, for some if they are given 10 lives they will not change one simple bad attitude, change is a herculean process and before a person will initiate change, he has to be convinced he needs to change, this is the challenging part of the process for most of us are blinded by our wrong perception and will refuse to see the truth when it is shown to us. If you will love successfully you have to decide to live in peace with this attitude because in the long run the person may never change and if you had built the foundation of the friendship based on the persons ability to change then the relationship will not be successful. This does not mean that you will not make an effort to change the person, it is best to be a reason for others to change than to force a change on them, humans are very stubborn and will resist most external influence whether it is in our best interest to accept it. This does not mean that you like the attitude, it only means you understand the person enough to accept them for their weakness, this unconditional acceptance is necessary for their growth since in the first place the wound may have been caused by conditional acceptance.
Like Nathaniel Branden said in his book, “six pillars of self esteem”, “Accepting, compassionate interest does not encourage undesired behavior but reduces the likelihood of it recurring”
This is so because
“ We do not understand another human being when we know only what s/he did wrong, unkind, destructive or whatever. We need to know the internal consideration that prompted the behavior. There is always some context in which the most offensive actions can have their own kind of sense. This does not mean they are justified, only that they can be understandable”
This noble leadership skill of understanding is crucial not just for our love affair but for all interpersonal relationship. The greatest principles we live by are not got from well meaning preaching or books but are gained in our direct experiences of life. As we cruise through life we are exposed to many experiences, some we understand and some we don’t, some we are ready to deal with and some we are not ready or equipped with the mental or moral strength to handle, some experiences sip through and leave their mark on our subconscious mind, a mark which creates an undesirable effect …. These gamut of experiences, perception and ideas create who we are and what moral principles we live by. These principles may be good or bad, even when we know that we have certain negative characters or attitude, we still lack the strength to change them, maybe because the map with which we are navigating the world is wrong and requires to be rewritten and we lack the knowledge of rewriting this map. But in all of us, we still desire someone to accept us irrespective of our strength and our weakness. Unconditional acceptance makes it easier for people to grow out of their weakness, it provides the conducive environment for positive growth in all facet of ones life. The vital truth here is not to search for someone to accept you unconditionally but to accept another person unconditionally for love is not a receiving process but a selfless giving of the self for the benefit of the beloved.
This then creates a room for us to empower our beloved with the needed acceptance required for them to be themselves, to be real without the fear of being rejected. Unconditional acceptance then empowers them to heal from the old wounds of childhood, adulthood and present challenges. This paves the way for the nurturing work of love. As we grow in life, we have aspirations, dreams and expectations we cherish but the challenges of life make it sometimes impossible for us to share our dreams and these noble aspects of our self with anybody- though we may not know it but this stifles us cos iron sharpens iron and a dream shared gets strength to leave the airport of self and launch into its journey of actualisation. Sometimes we have some character flaws which we desire to change but we do not trust anybody enough to discuss such with them. The nurturing work of love starts when we provide the unconditional acceptance for our beloved to be open and discuss these deep needs of the soul, heal the self and develop new virtues. This is the main reason we should not “fall in love” rather we ought to “grow in love” if you fall in love, you will fall our heartbroken mainly because there is no room for growth in the relationship rather than growth, you will be suffocated in the relationship. Growing in love is the main work of love, without this growth, there is no love in the relationship. This growth is both ways in that, as you nurture another, you are growing youself, it is like writing, when you start writing, you will be exposed to so much information that you will refine yourself and develop an appreciable integrity, all these even without your knowledge, only after a long time, when you look back at who you have become, you will see a great difference in you.
EMPOWER AND NURTURE -By the use of the word empower, the decision to love another creates an impetus in you, an impetus to take on the responsibility of positively impacting that person. It is like when you are an illiterate and know nothing then you choose to go to school, in the beginning, it will be challenging but the price of knowledge can never be compared to the backyard of ignorance. When you take on the responsibility to positively impact, the first thing is that you the nurturer will improve yourself without knowing it. Just like writing a book, in the process of writing, you will be exposed to such a huge amount of knowledge you will shed a lot of bad attitude in you and finally you will be refined in character to a point you become a mentor to many.
True love starts in nurturing and empowering, without this ingredient the love is empty and dry and will suffer greatly if it lasts beyond the attraction and infatuation stage. True love is platform from which we nurture our most cherished desires, ideals and aspiration. The healing effect created by love provides the motivation for the soil to blossom its wealth of capabilities , aspiration and dreams.
Eleas Stanley