there is a correlation between your relationship and my lack of involvement

leaving all of us sitting in the moment
ok. i know someone, who created a list of what love is. this i find interesting, even though i'm a little outdated in addressing it. i want to criticize this as an idea, or as a description of an emotion. the original list is posted at zigjackofalltrades.blogspot.com. the assumption i'm making here is that it is a description of legitimate, moral, and healthy love--whatever this may truly be, but we can generally agree on what it is not.

my first criticism revolves around 2. no human being is worth taking life for, with the single exception of protecting the lives of others. but as a general rule, this isn't an indication of love of an individual. maybe its a social obligation, but protecting others isn't love. and taking of life for other reasons is unacceptable. it is far from clear to me how this relates. you kill for ideas maybe, like the survival of freedom, but out of anger or any other motivation is not a reflection of love in any legitimate sense.

generally the list makes no sense. i noticed that some people believed that it was some deep expression of emotion. to be honest, much of the non-list material was an expression of a deeply held emotion, and i'm not criticizing that. i'm more interested in defining this emotion.

but these two parts are inconsistent. love tells you to abandon your dreams for someone else yet makes you want to pursue them more by becoming the best that you can be. this is very much the moral of both sections.

further, it is troublesome the proposition that love requires the sacrifice of everyone but the loved person if that loved person needed it. first, this is troublesome because of the "unselfish" nature of love inflicting a very selfish cost. second, it is troublesome that a position is described by a situation that should never occur if it is love, which implies that it is a meaningless statement. third, this implies that there can only be one love at any time, or at a minimum, only one most important love, like one ring to rule over them all.

all of these statements are ultimately meaningless. for instance, you can never share "anything...with no negative repercussions." if this were the case, then no one is in love. there are certain things that you do not to or share with someone you love because you value their enjoyment of whatever experience over your lack of enjoyment. you do things you don't want because the other person wants you to, and they enjoy it, and you do not want to hurt them by telling them otherwise. if you told them, and they got angry, then this statement means that they do not love you. no one does, can, or should share everything they think or feel. if you do that, then you are being selfish. nor do you want to be totally honest with anyone. this might be the worst advice of all. sometimes love is lying. everyone lies. you have to.

you can never accept anyone unconditionally either. things change. circumstances change. here's the problem, this is like a photograph of love. of course you accept someone unconditionally now when you feel a certain way, but the test is do you accept them when they are different? the answer is maybe. what if they took a position you morally oppose? what if they betrayed you? unconditional acceptance isn't an option, and may even be, in some occassions, morally questionable. effectively by definition, unconditional love cannot be restricted to a set of specific circumstances found in a given moment.

it is simply not possible to feel strong and weak in any real sense. it sounds very pretty, but the two are mutually exclusive, other than in the general sense. and used in this general sense it is meaningless. it offers no guidance, many circumstances reverse a person's specific level of confidence and assurance without being love. and you can never feel strong and weak, yet totally secure around someone. because feeling secure and better about yourself is not feeling weak, and it sounds an awful lot like feeling strong.

he might be pretty close with his statement that it is wanting "to be around them, even at the worst of times."

the description i'm criticizing attempts to be pretty. there is nothing pretty about definitions. love, like all complex ideas can only be described in simple, virtually meaningless ways. i can explain all "love" behaviors through self interest and the social order and its larger welfare. its not pretty, and no women are going to write on here how deep and warm this is, and no one is going to want to meet me because of it.

love, as an idea defies its simple sound and easy definition. it is an inadequate term to describe a broad range of emotions. but i will try. love is non-exclusive. love is a genuine concern for the well-being and enjoyment of another living thing. love is adding an additional weight to their well-being and enjoyment in comparison to society in general and to your own [although these two are not equal]. love is wanting to be around another living thing. notice i am excluding love of inanimate objects, but including love for all living things. love is not some amazing, powerful force for good. it's caring. it describes no course of action that can be applied to every circumstance. it's listening, forgiving, leaving, staying, ignoring, lying, honesty, sharing, excluding, including, knowing, forgetting, its everything that living things do to one another when they do those things considering the interests of the other living thing. often, it is being moral and doing the right thing, however you define moral.

we are social creatures. and love is a social emotion. and even our perception of it will change as society changes.

i'm sure most people will fail to find this idea romantic, or interesting, and will generally prefer the other list. but the truth is, no one is perfect. nothing is perfect. we should all strive to understand one another, and how we are imperfect is a real part of this process. no fairytale ideal of human emotion is accurate, fair, or healthy. we are all broken, and that is ok.

oh. and this title is just interesting to me, and a comment i made to a friend. and i was listening to "you and a promise" by howie day. and the two ideas kind of meshed in my head. but, even that story is a statement about love, and what it actually is, and how broad of an idea it is that the list failed to do justice to. also, as a post script to the original author, no offense is meant by this criticism, and i appreciate that you gave me something to think about on an otherwise boring day.

and the celebration had begun

to many, the world serves as evidence of god. but not to me.
i look around at the cruelty of nature, and recognize that it speaks volumes.

i was looking at images of bombings.
and i was thinking of what a horrible thing bombing is.
and how we should seek to forever avoid it.
then i thought about the middle east.
and religious fanaticism both abroad and here.
and the future of warfare.

it should be the goal of some of the smartest people in our society to discern a way to engage our new enemies in a manner that minimizes suffering. it seems to me, that thus far, we have dramatically failed in such an endeavor.