English 106
Introduction
“What Love is,” was the most searched phrase on Google in the year 2012. It indeed is a feeling, like hunger, thirst. Love is an emotional need than a physical thus it is difficult to quantify it and say how much would be enough and how much will be more. Love is believed to be a tool that humanity thrives on a feeling of security, support, and most importantly the want to live life. It can be in most cases auspicious and can induce positive human behavior but then it has many negative aspects as well. People lose control on their intense feeling of love and turn into a disaster. Many of times it costs the life of their own or of someone they claimed to love. The article will define various aspects of Love.
What Love is:
Love has many forms and definitions. An intimacy or closeness or relationship between two individuals without any preconditions or a notion of getting something in return can be termed as “Love.” Love can be between friends or family or partners, pets, God, or even with your country – it cannot be contained. In India, there was a saint named “Mira” who loved “Lord Krishna” – a Hindu God.
Love varies across people, perception and experience. One believes in what one gets out of love. If love is reciprocated by love, it is life and if it is reciprocated by hatred or even neutral feeling it in many cases cause death – not only of the body but mind. Some say “Love is Life,” “Love is blind,” “Love is Goodness,” “Love is cruel.”
Love is Life: An act of appreciation which makes life worth living is Love. Life can be seen as difficult, filled with problems, difficulties and pessimism without love. Only if love surrounds someone, the desire to live long exists. Kurt Vonnegutis is known to be an extremist about love, in his book “The Sirens of Titan” commented “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
Love is Blind : Shakespeare in his book “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” says “Love looks not with eyes but with the mind.” So anything you find beautiful is because you love it. Love does not see or differentiate between right or wrong, it just exists between two people. Though there may be a difference in opinion about the positive and negative notions of blind love.
Love is Goodness: God’s creation is to see good and do well. Beauty, intelligence, talent and appreciative behavior are act of goodness and these induce Love. God loves all of us because we are all good in his eyes.
What is not Love?
Many times love is misunderstood. Love is not obsession, love is not a boundary or restriction, love is not a commodity that can be sold or bought.
Love is cruel: As are stories on love that impart positivity on love so are negatives. The stories which share negative values are more valuable because it is easy to get away with a positive feeling, but very difficult to shed negative feelings of love. As human beings, we need to clearly differentiate between the two. In his book “Araby,” James Joyce's, talks about the frustration of a boy who could not got to the bazaar or market and get a gift for the girl he supposedly loved. This breeds frustration in him. Towards the end of the story, he stands angry and deserted. That was is not love. Love generates satisfaction.
In another novel written by Raymond Carver in 1982 titled “What We talk About When We Talk About love,” Mel thought that love was nothing more than spiritual love, while Terri said the man she had lived with before Mel loved her so much that he tried to kill her. While love can have a humane connection it can also be heartless. The novel portrayed four souls who sat around the kitchen table, where the main character Mel spoke the most, and secondly his wife Terri. Terri had a hell of the love story that was comical yet pitiful and sad. Her husband, Ed, beat her to prove that he loved her. Ed was crazy in love to the point of killing himself. When Terri finally left Ed, he drank rat poison, and then shot himself, as the rat poison did not work. He killed himself just to prove his love for Terri.
Both the examples of books have one thing in common. The feeling that the protagonist calls love is not actually love. It is merely a one sided infatuation of a person towards another. Feeling need to be clearly segregated and differentiated for the interest of all involved lifes.
Various other types of Love
Youth love is most talked, heard, read and written forms of all love. But then there are others which do not form the pages of a novel. An example is the poem “Execution” by Edward Hirsch, where the poet talks about the love of a coach towards the game of football. The coach was so much in love with the game that he did not care about his own body which was fighting with cancer. Even in his toughest times the coach could draw the best game and ways to win it.
Another example is of the love of a soldier towards his motherland. We all know wars are not a favorable action. People lose their lives become martyrs for their motherland, birth place. Training schools cannot teach the instinct of, it is the feeling of love towards one’s country. Mothers are another great example of love. They do innumerable sacrifices daily for their children. Love demands sacrifices at all times. Sacrifices are made ingenuously when someone is passionate about the feeling.
Conclusion
Love is one of most favorite topics of movies, novels, and literary writers. The need and want of love has always been and will remain until the dawn of humanity. The topic of love drives almost every story in the world. While trying to define love we gave many examples, but still we can say love cannot be defined with words, it can be better experienced. Love gives a reason to live in an otherwise hostile world.
James Baldwin in “The Price of the Ticket: Collected Non-fiction, 1948-1985,” wrote “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”
Sources
C, Raymond. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love: Stories. 1989.
H, Edward. Execution.
J, James. Araby. 2012.
Shakespeare. Midsummer Night’s Dream.
V, Kurt. The Sirens of Titan: A Novel. 1998
