I'm [unfortunately] in the mood where I'm thinking about the thing I both hate and enjoy pondering the most. I mean, on a biological level, what is love? "Love" is just our drive to reproduce. No sex = no continuation of species. Love is the illusion of that 'magic' to get you to reproduce. Yet, on a level where you accept that you're just an animal, love means so much more. As of yet, there's nothing I have that's worth saying, but I'd like to hear your stories.
You can be as broad or as specific as you want. What you feel about love, or how it should be. A specific instance where you felt (or felt the lack of) love. Your parents, your pets, your SO, anything.
Give me life stories, give me shower thoughts, I want to hear it all.
EDIT: I'd also like to emphasize the "lack of" as well. Tell me about things that didn't work out. Bestow your wisdom on me and others. What mistakes were made?
Hell, while we're at it, why don't we also talk about hate?
The one thing I can say is that love has a lot of enemies. Among them are anger, pride, and jealousy, the sins that will secure a spot for you in the deepest layers of hell. As a man who has a lot of experience with failed long-term relationships, the best advice I could give to a young person who wants to stay happy is to forgive, so long as the person is deserving of forgiving. If you let pride cloud your judgement, you will regret it later.
I didn't contribute to the previous love discussion 2.5 months ago. I didn't want to think about love then, and I didn't even want to read the postings about it. It must be a seasonal thing. So here we are again, and here's my nickel's worth (they are discontinuing the penny in Canada).
thenewgreen will miss his dog like crazy when it predeceases him...but his grief will be mediated by his gratefulness for all the ears of dogpalsmanship.
If you've had at least one big, crazy, wrong-headed passion that doesn't end in broken glass, then it's been a good run.You can be as broad or as specific as you want.
I will be broad here, gordonz88.
You will get over all the pain of love. Later on you won't believe how stupid in love you were: the obsession, the stalking, the longing.
And later, when you are over it, you'll be so glad that it all went down.
Somewhere down the line, when you are over it, you will kind of miss it, be glad you went through it, and vow to be smarter about it next time. Maybe you will be smarter, maybe just luckier.
You will learn to protect your heart; then you will realize that you have to leave it open and vulnerable if you are going to have a life at all.
You'll dive in again, and be hurt again - but you'll be certain this time that you will recover and recovery will come sooner (or later).
(Leonard Cohen, "The Future") I've seen the nations rise and fall
Heard their stories, heard them all -
But love's the only engine of survival -
What a beautiful song. For some reason, The Future never got as popular as other Cohen albums, but I would argue that it might be his best. And, the title track is a masterpiece. Of course, the line you quote is followed by the chorus, which for all you non-Cohen fans is: "When they said, 'Repent,' I wonder what they meant." I've always taken this to mean something along the lines of, "How do we know when we're acting like sinners, and anyway what business is it of yours?" The beginning of the song is about desire for dark pleasures. "It's lonely here. There's no one left to torture," and, "Give me crack and anal sex," he continues. So much of the song sounds angry to me. But, as you quote, "Love's the only engine of survival." Its a juxtaposition that I don't quite get other than to surmise that he is trying to say that love is what grants one salvation, despite what one's immediate desires may be.
Thanks b_b: Yes, love grants one salvation -- and more! the engine of survival -- the motor of our existence -- the get up and get to it because of "love" in any and all of its meanings.
-- Leonard Cohen, "Boogie Street" So come, my friends, be not afraid
We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made;
In love we disappear.
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah - Thanks Flaga. That is somewhat my point above. My read on "Hallelujah" is this: over and over Cohen talks about the pain of love, but he still ends every stanza with Hallelujah - which is gratefulness and praise. Even a cold and broken hallelujah is still a miracle.
Great song. A while back zomberry made a post with a conversation analyzing those lyrics that I really enjoyed reading. lil, I think you would dig it too.
There's nothing I can say about love that isn't tucked somewhere in here, and way more eloquently than I could put it. Socrates' "ladder of love" theory is particularly beautiful, although it deviates a fair amount away from what we generally think of as traditional love. Worth diving into if you have some time. EDIT: that's kind of a cop-out answer though, and doesn't add much to the discussion at hand. I will say that we use "love" as a catch-all term to easily describe any number of complex relationships and emotions. It's like that Radiolab on color, where they talk about how before there was a name for the color "blue," it's conjectured that people almost didn't even perceive the color blue as blue. They always found an awkward work-around, like "grey" or "wine-dark" or "purple." So there's this very real thing that, because we don't have the right receptors for or because we haven't found the language to shape our perception, we don't end up seeing as it truly is, or else mislabel it as something else. Come to think of it, this probably happens all the damn time with a million tiny aspects of our lives given our pitifully narrow spectrum of perception and our laughably restrictive language structures. And it might be that a higher life form would have no problem pointing out a quality and describing it simply and perfectly, but we're just unequipped. It's like asking an ant to accurately describe in human language and on human terms the idea of pheromones, and how they shape the ant's life. We can work and work our entire lives or as a race over the span of several hundred or thousand generations to define a thing, but maybe we're just not equipped to identify and describe the thing as it truly stands. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try, though. There you go, that's love.
Sometimes I like to think of love like gambling. You play with the hope of winning, knowing that you'll likely lose. How much you lose is entirely up to you, but if you don't want to take the risk, step away from the table. Losing sucks, but it sweetens the wins.
A while back Saydrah had a nice post titled What does being in love feel like to you. I think it could provide some insight for you. Upon looking back, it appears you had some insight for me. Love is a tough thing to allow yourself to feel for some people. Many times, this is because love inevitably leads to loss. I have two dogs and I love them both a lot. They are 7 and 8 years old. They will not likely live past the age of 15. It will break my heart when they die. I can already envision what a mess my wife will be and how I will have to explain what had happened to my daughter who will have grown up with them. It is going to hurt like hell and I'm going to have to be the one that consoles my family while internally being in agony myself. All of this because I chose to bring them in to our lives and love them. And that's just a dog. What happens when a marriage ends or a long term relationship? When a loved one dies? Love is dangerous stuff. Is it worth it? I think so, but many do not.