As I have moved through this reality we call life, I have heard numerous different ideas and definitions about the subject of love. Some simplistic and silly, … others, … sublime. Endless books, epic poems, paintings, works of art and the Taj Mahal have all been dedicated to the love someone had for someone else. Love is that powerful. Like both a sleepy blue ocean (thanks John (Denver)) and a pure arc of electricity, … it is divine. It seems that no two people can actually agree on what love really is but almost everyone knows it when they see it or feel it. This played on my mind for some time, and I finally decided to come up with a way of looking at love that may be helpful to others.
Love – How do you know you love someone or that they love you? It is very simple, … do you care about them more than yourself? If both of you are hungry and there is only one slice of pizza left, do you make sure that they get it? If it’s raining hard and you instinctively move your umbrella over that other person so that they stay dry while it rains on you, … there is the place love grows. If you have $30 in your pocket and you normally stop off at the bar or pub for a quick drink before heading home after work but now find yourself sincerely without being pressured into it, in the baby section of the local supermarket looking at skin lotions so that the new baby that your wife has delivered for you does not get chapped skin on his small bottom, … you’ve begun to love someone else. It is when you begin to care about someone more than yourself. It is that simple. Love is when someone else has displaced your own internal importance in your mind. When you feel that, you’re beginning to touch the most powerful amperage this Universe can put out. Quasars pale in comparison to the brilliance of love.
True Love – How do you know if you truly love someone? It is very simple, … do you care about them so much more than yourself that you would give up your life to save theirs? Would you take on their pains, their toils, their burdens, … and make them your own? If they were being tortured to death, … would you switch places with them knowing that your life would soon end very painfully? If the answer is an unequivocal “Yes”, it is very likely that you truly love someone else and have taken the critical step to move beyond your own wants and needs. True Love is a flowering of love, a slow evolution and convolution where the “you” of your mind becomes increasingly displaced and that other person and their needs become more important than yourself. This is a step that some portion of people and most psychopaths never reach (and in many cases, sadly, cannot reach). To truly love someone is something wonderful! No life is well lived or complete without True Love. Don’t believe me? …. Just listen to Westley (skip to the 1:12 mark if you please):
Now it may seem like True Love is something vanishingly rare but it is not. It hides in all the wonderful places around us everyday. Most good mothers love their children so much that they would sacrifice themselves in an instant if they knew this would save them. Watch little kids run out of an elementary school at the end of the school day, and you can see it up close. Many times Love and True Love are not particularly newsworthy or grand in gesture, … but they do flower everywhere. Like the Heathrow Arrivals Gate:
And in the oceans, …
On July 24th, 2018, a female killer whale, later named Tahlequah by cetacean specialists at The Whale Museum (Friday Harbor, Washington, United States), sadly gave birth to a calf that died about 30 minutes later in the waters near Victoria, British Columbia. In an incredible display of affection, she pushed her deceased calf with her head for 17 days trying to bring it back to life, even possibly endangering her own health to do so. (Equivalent to a 68 kg/150 lb human mother balancing a ten pound baby on her forehead for 17 straight days at the deep end of a swimming pool while coming up to breath every 20 seconds or so!) If that is not True Love, …. what is?
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/08/orca-mourning-calf-killer-whale-northwest-news/
Amorem Magnificum – What about the love for more than just another person but for an entire group, nation or ideal. We all recognize that the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Gandhi, Martin Luther King and many others believed in a people/a group/humanity or a particular ideal so strongly that they were willing to die for them/us/it. How do you know if you feel Amorem Magnificum (Greater Love) for a people or a cause. It is very simple, …. do you care about them/it more than yourself? If writing a get well card to a sick child with leukemia at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN, is more important than getting to a yoga class, a pizza dinner, or a drink with friends, it is likely you have begun to displace yourself for an entire group of people or a particular cause. Every great social revolution from Moses to the Hong Kong Protests was or is led by one or more people who would give up their lives for what they believe is a better world. People become rabid fans of their favorite team. Soldiers jump on grenades to save their mates and in the most rare instances, unique individuals willingly give up their freedom or their lives so that millions of others they have never met and never will, might be better off. When you begin to care about a people or a cause that is greater than yourself, … you have moved outside your own needs and wants. Not many can do that.
Love, the deeper True Love and Amorem Magnificum are very much a part of what allows our consciousness to touch the sublime. …. To transcend what we alone by ourselves can be. … Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Of course, many of you reading this might also like to know, what is love actually? What is it made of? Is it only a soup of oxytocin and neuropeptides and nothing more? How does it function exactly, from a scientific point of view? What is the physics of love? The inertia of love? Those are points that I will touch upon in Part II of this article that will appear later. For now, let me leave you with three great clips of Love, Amorem Magnificum and True Love: