The line in my title is better known as a statement and not as a question but since I am always pointing out how questions are more important than answers, I agree that it should be in this form. Some will answer the question with yes and some with no, it all depends on our personal experiences and our thought patterns. What do you think? If you knew in advance that you will end up hurting and suffering, would you love?
I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Those lines come from the poem In Memoriam A.H.H. written by British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1849. The last line is often used to discuss the endings of romantic relationships even though the poet wrote the piece in remembrance of the death of his friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Arthur died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in Vienna in 1833. Critics all around the world considered this poem to be one of the great poems of the 19th century. Keeping this in mind, I will move away from focusing entirely on romantic relationships and approach this from a general standpoint. Love is not only romantic, ask any parent that and they will agree. If you could ask Alfred, Lord Tennyson, he would agree too.
Whether we want to admit it or not, love is almost always conditional. We love people when they act the way we approve. A lot of that acting is related towards us. We will appreciate someone being kind, generous and loving more than we will someone who is mean or unjust to us. There is love and there is Love. Love starting with the capital letter does not have conditions. If you Love with L and not l, you will do so regardless of if your friend/lover/child/neighbor has done something wrong and you will continue to do so even when they leave you.
I am not necessarily saying that being selfish is a bad thing. Of course you love a person who is being nice to you, we all have preferences. I am just saying that you should be aware of that. A lot of marriages end up in divorces because one or both sides did not follow the rules and went on to do or say something that the other party does not approve of. Love stopped. Is that possible? Can we truly say that we loved someone if we can stop loving them? We could be disappointed or hurt but I do not think that you can ever stop loving someone.
People more often love what they think a person is than the actual person. We create an image of a person in our minds and then get very surprised and disappointed when it turns out we were wrong. Are we able to say and really mean the following:
I love you for what you are
and not for what I want you to be.
There are two major questions we have to ask ourselves. The first one is do we love a person for who he or she is or do we love them for who we think they are. The second question is will we love them when they stop being that. What are the reasons behind our love, what are the conditions? What rules does the person must follow in order to be loved by us? We all have those rules but are we all aware of them or are we deluding ourselves?
I once asked one teen why does she love her father who was never there for her and with whom she has no relationship with. She said: "Because he is my father" and I answered her that genetics is a stupid reason for love, it is a terrible excuse. Should children love their abusive parents? Should a girl love her father if he rapes her? Should a mother love her child who is beating her and burning cigarets on her body? No. Plain and simple, no. A certain amount of rules to love someone is a good thing to have. You are not obliged to love someone just because they are related to you. You could Love them, but not love them.
The only reason to love someone is for the feeling you get with that loving. You do not have to love your parents and you do not have to love your children. You do not have to love anyone, no one can make you love anyone. People get very sensitive when I say that you do not have to love your child and some even say how it is impossible to not love your kids. Hm... A lot of social workers would disagree. There are many abusive people in this world and nope, I do not believe a father who rapes his daughter or sells her of is loving her. Therefore, it is possible not to love your child. I also do not believe that a mother who is abused by her son is loving him, she is trying and breaking under social constructs but she is suffering and there is no love there. Again, not loving your child is possible. These radical examples are here to prove a very specific point. No one can make you love anyone, it is always up to you and your own preferences. Why do you love? Because you think you have to and are deluding yourself or do you really love?
I have heard a lot of abused women say that they still love their husbands because they are, in fact, their husbands. Another stupid reason to love someone, a contract, a piece of paper. I can not stress this enough, no one can force you to love. Love because you really do love, stop faking.
We all have a limited time on this Earth and love is one of those things that makes it worth wild. There are so many people you could enjoy, love and be loved by. Every moment is a blessing, use it. After reading this text, you could go outside and be hit by a truck. I could go outside and be hit by a truck. Think about that for a moment and decide on how your next moment will look like. Will you enjoy it? Will you love it? You could and you most definitely should.
People come and go out of our lives. Some stay for shorter periods of time and some for longer. Be grateful for all of them. Enjoy every moment because you never know if it is going to be your last one or not. Smile often and love whenever you can. It is always better to love and lose than not love at all. We lose people all the time. Some leave us, some are left by us and they all sooner or later die. Suffering is a normal part of the love process. We suffer after a loss because we will miss that person, that is normal. Besides, some of the best art pieces came out of depressed states. We should be grateful for our depression too for it also teaches us and allows us to grow and evolve, grieving is beneficial for our development. We can learn something from everything, even that.
There is always a chance you could get hurt by someone but that should not be stopping you from entering a relationship with another person. If it were better to not have loved at all, we would not be with anyone, ever. There would be no relationships because all relationships end, if not by any other means then by death and death is always hard to handle. Your husband or wife will die eventually but that should not be stopping you from loving them now. That should not be stopping you from living love and loving life.
LOVE LIFE
AND LIVE LOVE!
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I think for me the answer to the first question is yes, but the other questions you raise do make one think which is great
I think if you truly love someone for who they are, of course you hope who you think they are is really who they are, but if you discover the real person and love them then that is best.
Often people think they love someone but also want to help in their own mind improve them but changing them to make them better
I think thats a bad idea, by doing that you are trying to change the person you love into someone different and that person you may not love or love as much
And you know what happens then? We change the person and then leave them because they are no longer the person they were when we met them. It is a hilarious but very common scenario. Thank you for your lovely comment and your thoughts about this. 💚
@zen-art yes exactly, I have seen it happen so many times
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Yes.
I think this is the easiest question you have asked since I have known you.
Yes! Every time. The fact that what ever relationship didn't work out to my satisfaction or theirs isn't even part of the equation. And YES. I still love them every one.
Now you have me thinking about how much poorer my life would have been for never loving. Almost immeasurably so. I can't even imagine my life without.
The pain is transitory, the love just goes on and on.
“Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.”
― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
Copied and pasted because I did not want to botch it by paraphrasing.
Thanks Petra. For such an easy hard question...
Sometimes I have to ask the easy questions too :) I love Kahlil Gibran, thank you for his quote and for your thoughts on this 💚💚💚
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Intersting perspective. After years of hardship I feel I have figured out love. I would like to believe so anyways. Love does not hurt, love is not sad, love does not make you cry. If those exist is was never really love in ththe first place. I realized this after a divorce a few years ago it was a nasty relationship and every time we go into an arguement i would burst out that i hated him. Then apologize.. i realize now i probably shouldn't have apologized.. he caused so much grief in my life that in the heat of anger i was probably right...
That experienced helped you to become the person you are today and I am glad you came out stronger and wiser 💚
There are so many different types of love and you have a very honest and realistic view, I think it is very important to point out that we should not love out of a sense of duty. I don't want to write much more as I still have to answer mine, but well done on yours xxx
You are right, loving out of sense of duty is wrong but I think it is not really loving, it is faking to love and deluding ourselves and others. Looking forward to reading your take on this 💚
Loved reading this, you write the truth. Yes, let's love for real and be honest if it is real love or just our expectations.
xx
I am glad you enjoyed reading this my favorite food porn chef, much love to you 💚
Haha you are so sweet!!:)
loving someone for who they truly are vs who you want them to be is one of the biggest lessons i've had to learn this year. and i think that the idea of avoiding love because of getting hurt is too risk aversive...it's like you said, why bother doing anything at all then? And I totally agree that just because someone is your parent or child you are not obligated to love them, especially if they are being abusive.
I am glad you enjoyed reading this and that you had your lesson this year. I am sure you are a wiser and bigger person because of it. We always learn, if we allow ourselves. Thank you for your lovely comment 💚
Ok this is an interesting question. I would also say it's better to love and risk the loss that will come around. But what I would like to ask you is this: If losing means being hurt by someone, is it better if you had never loved that person? Like being in an abusive relationship.. Would it have been better to have never been attached to that person? Or is there something in him or her that you truly loved and won't forget in the end? Because, as you said, a lot of people say that they still love that person. I know this may seem extreme but isn't there something loveable in every person? (I don't know if you're religious, but what would you make of the idea of loving your enemies?)
There is a big difference between love and Love. I Love everyone, even those that I do not love. As for your question, I am sure that not being in an abusive relationship is better than being in one. We should never allow someone to abuse us or abuse others, that has never and will never have anything to do with love but with an abused psyche that thinks that is depended on its abuser and mistakens that for love. Stay safe and stay loved 💚
You are correct. We have a short time in this world and love makes life worth while. Loving unconditionally the people that we truly love. Faking love will only lead to unhappiness. I have a relative, married for years with two kids. Realizing that they never really loved each other. Maybe it was just infatuation and desire not true love. Time wasted and misery caused to people around them who truly loves them.
Misery loves company, once it starts to get bad it will only get worse if we do not do something about it. Thank you for insightful comment 💚
Insightful and thoughtful post! I was thinking about the relationship between child and parent. Coming from an Asian background (or maybe it is just me), the respect for and the hierarchical setting of elders (including parents) makes it a funny fit with love. If course the love is there, but a sense of duty seems to be the central structure, when the child is young, the duty of the parent is to to care. When the child is older and the parents are older, the duty of care reverses.
It is weird, my parents brought us up in a fairly western way, but somehow this sense is still strong for me and my brother...
I see nothing wrong with that duty to care for another being. Just think how much better this world would be if more people had that sense of duty, a duty to care for another human being. Thank you for your lovely comment and for sharing your personal experience 💚
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Thank you 💚💚💚
Ah love is such a complex thing. I could never understand why the abused go back to their abuser under the guise of love. Then i read 'The Body Keeps the Score' which explained a lot to me. Alot of neuroscience is involved in this love thang. Highly recommended!!! 💚
Yeah, our brains are very tricky and can sometimes be against us but everything can be fixed with therapy and proper medication. Thank you for your insightful comment. 💚
You cannot change others but you can change the way you react.
React with love to everything and be loved by the universe.
Peace, Love, Gratitude!
We can never change others, only ourselves. With others, the only thing we can do is be there when they need us and provide help and support if they ask for it 💚
It may sound contradictory, but loss makes one's life.....richer.
I don't know how to articulate this, and it may sound cliche, but I do believe that experiencing loss makes you more capable of love.
Contrast is important, life gives us the good and the bad and we can really learn and grow from everything 💚
Yes there you go!
Another great, thought-provoking post - and very relevant to me just now, as I've been helping a close family member deal with a younger family member who has been very verbally abusive and difficult. It seems to be starting to turn out well, but there have been a few moments when being loving in the normal way was not helpful for either party.
And I can think of two incidents where good friends behaved so unpleasantly towards me that I said, firmly, "enough is enough". In both cases the friendships were re-kindled and ultimately became stronger.
I am glad that everything worked out and you know standing up for yourself is important. Thank you for sharing your experience 💚💚💚
love and Love.
love is transitory (actually - i don't believe this is love. LOL love with a little l.... this is the misuse of the word. hahahaha)
Love with a capital L. this is truth. This is the one that is eternal and unconditional and lasting.
anything short of that (in my opinion, of course) is something SHORT of love. maybe comes soooooo close. but... not the real thing.
The real thing doesn't end :) The fake thing? eh. comes and goes. infatuation, lust, strong admiration, deep affection. but not Love.
and i agree with you-if you have Loved.... it is always better - even when its lost. Because when you're touched by Love - you're changed for the better!
always missing you <3
Thank you for such a lovely comment honey, yes, we are always changed for the better with LOVE 💚
Some really interesting questions in this post. "There is love and there is Love. Love starting with the capital letter does not have conditions." This is something that I have contemplated myself. Thanks for your interesting take on the question 👍❤
I am glad you enjoyed the read and that it got you thinking about the subject 💚
@zen-art, your art work within your write-ups are inspiring and makes reading really sweet. I totally agree that people create images in their minds and fall in love withese preconceptions only to get disappointed and its very important for us to love people for who they are and most of all asks our selves the question " will we stop loving them if they change from who they were?"
In marriage most people say i will love you in sickness and in health, in wealth or poverty, for better or for worse, etc. Do they really mean this?
I really appreciate your honesty in raising up strong issues of love like the possibility of not loving your child and stupidity of loving people just because of genetics. Its high time people start thinking of love for what love truly is and not for some unexplainable reasons. Personlly, i agree with a lot of strong issues you raised and i wish more peope see it this way for if they do, it can build a more loving community.
I am not sure people mean those words when they get married, at least not all people. Thank you for your honest and lovely comment and for sharing your thoughts about this 💚