So sometimes this blog will turn into an essay page, I suppose. (messy, unorganized, unclear essays, but essays nonetheless.)
Feel free to skip over this type of entry, I will never know the difference.
~~~
Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking.
It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.
I Corinthians 13:4-8
We have all heard these lines, whether in a movie or at a wedding (or at a wedding in a movie), or just in church. What do they mean?
Priests will claim that this defines love as far too perfect and selfless for humans to ever share it with each other - we are creatures that are too selfish, too self-serving, too jealous. Priests and the religious will claim that the love described can only be god's love for his each and every "child".
(Yet they read it at a wedding and never comment. Just another of the church's frequent hypocrisies. I don't even bother getting offended about it anymore. This does, however, explain the "unaffiliated" status of my spiritual beliefs.)
It doesn't matter how hypocritical the church is, my point is this: I disagree with them.
Love is perfect, that is true. The love in this passage from the bible seems too flawless to be anything humans have ever felt.
But it's not.
We feel it all the time.
We love each other. Everyone, even the most hateful person, has some slight love for each and every human on this planet. Even those we don't know. This can be because we have sympathy, or empathy, and thus we all - deep down - know that everyone else is living their life as they see fit, just as we are. And we know that we are all just living because we can. No one really knows why they are here, so we all feel alone together. And we love those that resemble ourselves, it's human nature.
And when it comes to familial love, of course it is perfect. Sure, we fight. Sure we hate each other sometimes. But not forever, and not deeply. Jealousy is a human feature. But it is NOT a feature of any type of love. We can be jealous of those we love, jealous for their time or their affections.
That doesn't mean our love is jealous.
We all lose our patience, it happens.
From time to time, We all bring up old trespasses (even some prayers ask the "perfect" God to forgive us our trespasses. A perfect creature should not need to be asked.) that our loved ones committed against us.
We are all proud and boastful, that is natural - to build ourselves up for our partner - it is only because we feel unworthy of our partner's affections.
If we weren't self-seeking, we would never be happy. To be completely and utterly selfless is against human nature - it would be denying our true selves, as "designed" or as a result of evolution, whichever you believe.
Note that the passage does not say love is NEVER angered, it says Love is not EASILY angered. Why is there such a gray area in that line, but none others? Christians must leave room for their God to get angry at them, or else there is no "stick" in the "carrot-stick" approach they've used since the dark ages to force piety out of their followers.
While I am discussing this God, I would like to add - how could a seemingly "perfect" God even love us? We are nothing like this God. We are imperfect, and thus a "perfect" creature could never understand us enough to love us. Understanding is key to loving. I am not suggesting that we all need to understand every detail about each other, but a basic understanding of goals and fears is required to feel any sort of empathy or sympathy for another creature. This God could never be capable of relating to us, and thus would never feel love... only a strange, detached form of responsibility or obligation, the way a human might notice an insect struggling to find cover during a rainstorm, and place it out of harm's way.
***
"It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails."
Whoa. That's a hefty load of requirements.
But let's look at it from the human perspective: Do we not all do things in order to protect our loved ones? Small things, sometimes - a white lie to protect your lover's feelings - and big things, sometimes - a child undergoes a dangerous operation just to give her ailing brother one of her own kidneys.
I cannot say that we will ever trust all of the time. But I can say this:
When a child is very young, what does she believe? What is true for her, and why? Had my parents told me that the earth was flat and that I had to eat grasshoppers with every meal in order to grow up big and strong, I would have believed them. Even now, as I am 18 and fully aware of the world that I live in - and of the lies my parents used to tell me (Santa and the Easter Bunny exist, no premarital sex, the church only has good intentions.) - I still trust them indefinitely. I would trust my father's judgement, even if I did not follow his advice. I trust their motives in caring for me, even when I question their methods.
Trust is strongest between a child and his parents, when good trust has been established. But it exists everywhere. Every relationship we enter into is based on trust. Thus the outrage when one finds out that, "this relationship is based on a lie!"
We trust our partner with our very heart - we put everything into a relationship, and hope to get everything out of it, too. Without trust, a relationship cannot be.
Everyone hopes. That is that. We all have something that we hope for, and usually it is - at the root - as simple as happiness. We hope for what will bring us happiness. We also hope for what will bring our loved ones happiness. Thus, love always hopes.
In love, we strive to better the experience. In love, we refuse to let go until we absolutely must. Thus, Love perseveres.
I have been in my share of relationships, all varying in their type, depth and intensity. The one factor that they all had in common is simple: Love.
Even now, when all of my past romantic relationships are over, I believe that I still have love for my past partners. I do not feel the same way as I did when I was involved with them, but I still have hope for their happiness and success in their hopes and dreams.
I believe that all ties formed as such are not severed when a relationship ends. They are obscured, not talked about, and fade in intensity. I shall take this "ties' metaphor a step further: these ties... they do not break, they simply "stretch" as we grow apart. Eventually they have stretched too far and we must find someone else to form a tighter bond with. But none are ever severed completely.
Thus, we all share permanent, albeit varying love.
Love never fails. It might fade a bit, but it always perseveres.
And the strongest Loves will never fade enough to be forgotten.
***
All love is perfection, or as close as it comes.
All love is "Corinthians" love. It's there, we just need to embrace it.
This is true of Romantic love, but romantic love is far more impassioned than any other type. In fact, this passion that is key to romance, it is because of this that we feel jealous and proud and selfish more easily and more deeply. We love someone so much that we want them all to ourselves.
***
And another thing!
I hate to add to the length of this entry, but this came to me after I was finished writing this.
Since I am already talking about love, and the disagreements I have with religion, this is the perfect place to discuss premarital sex. I know I mentioned it earlier, and I am sure that it
A) got your attention.
B) pissed some people off.
Well, these are my thoughts:
sex before marriage is a necessity. Sex is not just for reproduction, and humans are not the only creatures that have sex for pleasure. Sex is a biologically-driven urge, but only at it's most basic level. To equate sex with all biological urges is to say that humans developed the frontal lobe solely because it increased out ability to hunt successfully. Emotions, personality. Why can they play into everything about our humanity, but not sex? Why must sex be our "carnal desires" or one of our last few links to lower species? Why could it not also have developed into something more, as we developed into something more than homo erectus?
Someone shares my opinion: sex is sometimes referred to as "making love." I would have to say that it is not worded as well as I would have hoped. Sex should not be where love is first developed, or else the very meaning behind love must be redefined. Love is not the hormonal rush that results in ecstasy during sex. The term should have been something similar to "expressing love." Sex is the ultimate loving expression. It is giving of oneself wholly to one's partner, and trusting that person to love all that is you, some of which you yourself might not love.
But "expressing love" is not as romantic a term. So we shall continue referring to sex as "making love."
Sex is just a part of expressing and indulging in love. There is nothing dirty, wrong, or scandalous about it. There is nothing impure about giving oneself to another before marriage. Prohibiting such self-expression is putting shackles on love. To say "no sex before marriage" is to say "no love before marriage"
(I am not suggesting that love requires sex, or that sex requires love. I am simply suggesting that loving another enough to want to share a sexual experience should be reason enough to share such an experience. No chaste preacher could ever understand that.)
***
Humans are selfish, proud, possessive creatures.
So what? That's what we are. That's not love.
If you don't like yourself, change.
But remember this:
No matter how imperfect we all are, we are all capable of perfect love. It is there, and we must learn to embrace it and better ourselves so as to be able to share with each other the happiness it provides.
Love is.
Go share some.
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