What is love?

@Ichthus91,

Duke Ellington said if you have to ask, you will never know... He was talking about Jazz, but If I am talking about love are they really so different???Music has that subjective, immediate, and phenomenal quality in our experience much like an emotional experience... We all know what music is... Nietzsche knew what music was, to him; but Wagner called his music: Rubbish...If I could express my love so you would understand it, would it have anything to do with love as you concieve of it; or would it be so much rubbish???

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

Duke Ellington said if you have to ask, you will never know... He was talking about Jazz, but If I am talking about love are they really so different???Music has that subjective, immediate, and phenomenal quality in our experience much like an emotional experience... We all know what music is... Nietzsche knew what music was, to him; but Wagner called his music: Rubbish...If I could express my love so you would understand it, would it have anything to do with love as you concieve of it; or would it be so much rubbish???

I don't think you can express it, so others can understand it. Words don't mean much. Maybe your expressions are only meant to be understood by the one you love.

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@Elmud,

I think it would be cool if love as a form of relationship did not suffer as every relationship, from politics, differences, irrationality, and the very common self hatred and self destructivness of people...I tell people often what the shrink told the ironworker, not me, but my former trade....She said: From my experience you ironworkers do not form relationships so much as take hostages...We understand every concept when we see it as an ideal, and as a form of perfection...We understand circles by grasping the possiblility of a perfect circle...We think we understand love by understanding love as perfecction... There is no such thing...There is no justice that is not some what injustice...There is no love without some flaws, some frustration, some Not Love...We call it love it that is the dominant emotion... It is always beautiful to the extent that it is perfect, and it is never perfect...And every example is different

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@Elmud,

Love is hard to define because we never see it in its perfect form.

To me that is something like:

Love is the total dedication to others up to and including the complete sacrifice of self.

If I love you without reservation and you love me without reservation both get the maximum possible amount of love.
What we see in practice is not love, its game theory. Its a prisoners dilemma. If I love you more than you love me, I get hurt.
The end result is that neither side gets the maximum possible amount of love. The side who loves least benefits most, assuming the other will accept that.

1 Reply

@sarek,

sarek wrote:

Love is hard to define because we never see it in its perfect form.

To me that is something like:

Love is the total dedication to others up to and including the complete sacrifice of self.

If I love you without reservation and you love me without reservation both get the maximum possible amount of love.
What we see in practice is not love, its game theory. Its a prisoners dilemma. If I love you more than you love me, I get hurt.
The end result is that neither side gets the maximum possible amount of love. The side who loves least benefits most, assuming the other will accept that.

People loving least are wasting their time and lives as fully as the lives they are wasting for those loving more... All we have is life... Ultimately, to give life meaning we must have love, and no one can ever be shown who got more from life or love than they put in...

To love and lose often happens, sometimes by infidelity on the part of another, and sometimes for some other reason, unavoidably...If a person lives to be a million, and this happens 999k out, they can still recover... What destroys many, is to lose love, and to find after it was lost that it was true, and good, and ones goal, and to know that your own choice, holding back, infidelity, not giving all, caring all, not abandoning self to love as one abandons oneself at some point to death; -that is destroying, because there- is guilt...

Do you see how in tragedies it is by ones own choice that the antihero invites destruction??? It is for that reason that our choice should always be for love and for life, and that we get behind this choice with everything we have in life so that if it all comes to nothing we do not have to look back in doubt or guilt... Life is a quality one must experiance as a positive value...No one but the dead live in the past... To live as we must live, one must always be able to face the future, and keep ones thoughts from the past...And I say this by way of warning..I was the world's greatest lover, and the world's second greatest fool...The world's greatest fool is the one who reads these words, and can take no lesson from them... Love only one, and to her give your life and all you own and all of everything... Hold nothing back for tomorrow or for yourself...What is pointless in love is agony in love lost.. Spare yourself, and you will survive anything...

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@Elmud,

I just recalled that a wise old woman once told me: "Love is an action; it's not an emotion like all those horny teenagers think".

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@Ichthus91,

Ichthus91 wrote:

I just recalled that a wise old woman once told me: "Love is an action; it's not an emotion like all those horny teenagers think".

Yes; and still an emotion, and still a form of relationship and still a hazard...It takes some calm nerves and lot's of them to bet your life on love, and it can make you or break you, and reveal to you and all other what you are made of...I only know the best chance of surviving it, because it can be deadly... But when it works out, it is everything; meat drink and desert...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

Yes; and still an emotion, and still a form of relationship and still a hazard...It takes some calm nerves and lot's of them to bet your life on love, and it can make you or break you, and reveal to you and all other what you are made of...I only know the best chance of surviving it, because it can be deadly... But when it works out, it is everything; meat drink and desert...

I still like what my daughter said about love. She said, it is unconditional and unending. Could someone love me despite all of my imperfections and limitations? Could I feel the same way about them? Even though I find no imperfections in them that I find in myself. I can only answer for myself. and the answer is yes. In their perception of me, one can only hope. And it is a hope that they may see something in me, that
I cannot see in myself.

1 Reply

@Elmud,

Elmud wrote:

I still like what my daughter said about love. She said, it is unconditional and unending. Could someone love me despite all of my imperfections and limitations? Could I feel the same way about them? Even though I find no imperfections in them that I find in myself. I can only answer for myself. and the answer is yes. In their perception of me, one can only hope. And it is a hope that they may see something in me, that
I cannot see in myself.

It is still a relationship, and every sort of relationship can be killed... To say it is unconditional and unending is putting an ideal gloss on it...Just try to maintain love against the wishes of another....It takes a lot of back and forth, and people do need to be recognized and realized in their relationships... If it were a dance, both people would have to move...In some respects every relationship is like a journey taken through time...The object is the ideal...The reality is seldom ideal..

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

It is still a relationship, and every sort of relationship can be killed... To say it is unconditional and unending is putting an ideal gloss on it...Just try to maintain love against the wishes of another....It takes a lot of back and forth, and people do need to be recognized and realized in their relationships... If it were a dance, both people would have to move...In some respects every relationship is like a journey taken through time...The object is the ideal...The reality is seldom ideal..

Are you saying that the expectation exceeds the realization? Hey Fido. Do you remember the first time you fell in love? Did you do like I, and do everything you could to try and impress that person? I know i did. I only succeeded in making a blithering idiot out of meself. Being in love is a rough business. You kind of hope the other person can see past your futile efforts to impress them, and appreciate the feelings behind all that nonsense.lol

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@Elmud,

When it is love the realization exceeds the expectation... It is not love that is rough, but life; and love not working out is life, and people unwilling to do all that any relationship often demands is life... I know all about acting the fool for love, and I guess I don't want to go there... But I am a fool for love, but no more a fool than any person thinking they having love today they will have it tomorrow.. It is bucket that will carry a lot of water, but it has a hole in the bottom and must be continually filled..It is the love tomorrow you have to be concerned with, and of that I am no more certain than anyone else...All I know is that, once I have done all I can for love I can do no more... Then if love fails and I die lonely, I can die at peace, knowing cupid ran off with fortune and took my life with them...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

When it is love the realization exceeds the expectation... It is not love that is rough, but life; and love not working out is life, and people unwilling to do all that any relationship often demands is life... I know all about acting the fool for love, and I guess I don't want to go there... But I am a fool for love, but no more a fool than any person thinking they having love today they will have it tomorrow.. It is bucket that will carry a lot of water, but it has a hole in the bottom and must be continually filled..It is the love tomorrow you have to be concerned with, and of that I am no more certain than anyone else...All I know is that, once I have done all I can for love I can do no more... Then if love fails and I die lonely, I can die at peace, knowing cupid ran off with fortune and took my life with them...

I don't understand fido. I'm confused. Which, isn't unusual sometimes. I don't know if you look at romantic love in a pragmatic sense, or if you look at it in an idealistic sense. You told me that it should not have an ideal gloss put on it. I have to put an ideal gloss on it. Because for me, it is a dream. Seems like these days, two people get together, stay with each other for awhile, then, they go their separate ways. Divorce is an epidemic. I always thought, that you were meant to find someone, and be with them forever. Just one. If ,for whatever reason, you break up with someone who you thought you loved, you really did not love them and they really did not love you. I feel like true, sincere love, between two people, is something that was meant to be if it happens. Call it fate. Call it destiny. Call it anything you want. I want to call it, supernaturally natural. Sorry for being corny. One of those days.

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@Elmud,

Much as we idealize love, it is the reality people pursue, and that is beyond idealization... If you have a firm ideal of love, it is certain you will be miserable... When I was young, I looked for a girl with brothers, older or younger, it did not matter... When a man is old enough to be a dad, he does not have to be too good to be perfect, that is, ideal in the eyes of a daughter... By that time, He has most of the rough edges rubbed off of him... But a girl in looking for a husband should not conceive of a husband by the ideal of her father, because no man starts out that way... But if she has brothers, she knows what huge, gigantic, complete *******ss men are, and they will be happy with anything better, and happiness in a wife is the key to actually making a man better, since, if you take your improvement seriously, and you want to be a man a woman can be proud of, it is a hard way to go with the sense that it will do no good, and that no matter what you do you will not measure up to your wife's outrageous expectations... Ideals ruin relationships... Realities make relationships...
And if I read you right, I agree with you...People all the time tell me how lucky I am to have found my wife; but I bet no one ever tells her that... Yet, it took a lot of looking... And I am getting old, but I don't make my wife very happy...I don't think she is very happy, and for some very good reasons... But, When I can get past her disatisfaction with me, and get close to her, I realize that every thing about her is charming... Her skin is wonderful to touch, and she feels so right and smells so good that I don't think I could be pleased by anyone else, so if something happened to her, I would be a hermit... But I think I would do her a great favor if I dropped dead... She could have her pick of men, and many better off, nicer to be around, and generally more sociable... Until that time, every time is my last time, and I break away, and think of it and moan to myself...Isn't it wonderful?!!!. I will so miss sex with her if my thing quits working, or if she puts me off... She is the Goddess of Love...

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