Have you ever heard of “vertigo”? You may easily assume that what am I referring here is its mere definition as the fear of falling. It may be true in a sense but I want us to explore further depths in the light of the term. According to Milan Kundera – author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being – it is beyond the simplicity suggested by the definition. When we are on top of a building looking down, there is a resilient voice calling us from the abyss to at least dare to jump. This voice is so tempting and insistent that we feel a feeling of attraction to at least try and experience the feeling of a free falling object. However, the seemingly joyful feeling of weightlessness is not what matters most. It is more important to bear the importance of our weight when we hit the ground. It is as if embodying an affirmation that we have thus really existed. But we would just keep our hands under our chin on wondering how does it really feels to fall?
I think the message of this simple idea is not to encourage us to feel the literal falling. Mostly, it would lead us to the catastrophes of life, a time when we are caught between choices to make up for ourselves, to jump or to remain wondering in the rest of your damn life what you would have felt if you just tried. And no other concrete feeling of falling is characterized by love.
I have this friend of mine who always dares to ask me about love and if it is quite worth our momentary existence because it is something that certainly ends and if it ends, it is necessarily painful. Her sentiment is common to all of us not because pain is the real score of love but because most of us are cowards. We are cowards not to love but to pain so reservation in our part is turning to be a must when it comes to loving.
According to Erich Fromm, Love has two natures: the other being the fatherly love and another being the motherly love. Motherly love is unconditional. It is built on one’s own capacity to love, to love one’s wholeness no matter what. It is the type of love that accepts everything. On the other hand, fatherly love is conditional. It must be deserved and somebody must work out to get it. It is built on the capacity to reason. This does not necessarily mean that a person shall possess only one of those two. Striking a balance is essential. Love conquers resilient sentiments and misparallelisms. It crosses borders of differences but it also requires the right things to be done. It sometimes requires the condition of pain, of mispleasures and misunderstandings.
Mixture of both nature leads to love’s perfection. You can only say that you have loved if you felt the pain. It is rewarding in certain respects but it seeks responsibility in the other. Clive Staples Lewis have furthered the problem of pain by reconciling it to love. Love is perfection in itself but why does it gives pain which is not a perfection? Keeping track in this premise is the idea of the perfect love endowed by God. God, who is the perfect love Himself, allows pain to draw on our lives because it draws us closer to him, to perfection. The pain attributed to love makes us better lovers.
We are made by God out of his great love and we feel its pain out of great love too. It is just the mere proof of love’s existence in us. You may not agree with me for the mean time but rest assured the vertigo of loving is just around the corner, so deep yet so shattered. Even if it sounds of melancholic paradoxes, it is worth a try than to stare and wonder what it feels like to love and be loved in return for the rest of your life.
I think the message of this simple idea is not to encourage us to feel the literal falling. Mostly, it would lead us to the catastrophes of life, a time when we are caught between choices to make up for ourselves, to jump or to remain wondering in the rest of your damn life what you would have felt if you just tried. And no other concrete feeling of falling is characterized by love.
I have this friend of mine who always dares to ask me about love and if it is quite worth our momentary existence because it is something that certainly ends and if it ends, it is necessarily painful. Her sentiment is common to all of us not because pain is the real score of love but because most of us are cowards. We are cowards not to love but to pain so reservation in our part is turning to be a must when it comes to loving.
According to Erich Fromm, Love has two natures: the other being the fatherly love and another being the motherly love. Motherly love is unconditional. It is built on one’s own capacity to love, to love one’s wholeness no matter what. It is the type of love that accepts everything. On the other hand, fatherly love is conditional. It must be deserved and somebody must work out to get it. It is built on the capacity to reason. This does not necessarily mean that a person shall possess only one of those two. Striking a balance is essential. Love conquers resilient sentiments and misparallelisms. It crosses borders of differences but it also requires the right things to be done. It sometimes requires the condition of pain, of mispleasures and misunderstandings.
Mixture of both nature leads to love’s perfection. You can only say that you have loved if you felt the pain. It is rewarding in certain respects but it seeks responsibility in the other. Clive Staples Lewis have furthered the problem of pain by reconciling it to love. Love is perfection in itself but why does it gives pain which is not a perfection? Keeping track in this premise is the idea of the perfect love endowed by God. God, who is the perfect love Himself, allows pain to draw on our lives because it draws us closer to him, to perfection. The pain attributed to love makes us better lovers.
We are made by God out of his great love and we feel its pain out of great love too. It is just the mere proof of love’s existence in us. You may not agree with me for the mean time but rest assured the vertigo of loving is just around the corner, so deep yet so shattered. Even if it sounds of melancholic paradoxes, it is worth a try than to stare and wonder what it feels like to love and be loved in return for the rest of your life.
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