Is Love Enough

July 10, 2017

Is love enough
Love is a language we all speak but only few really understand it. - Kelvin

We love dogs, we kill it. We love cats, we kill it. We love rain but we soon start praying for sunshine. We love sunshine but after a while we start asking for rain. We love that t-shirt but we soon use it as a rag. We love rice but we soon get tired of eating it and we want something else. We love that wo(man) but after a year in the marriage we want nothing more than to be a divorcée or single again.

The word love seems to have lost it meaning. What then is love and is it ever enough?
What is love? This is a word that has received almost exhaustible voluminous definitions from various experts in diverse fields of learning. Yet, there appear to be just one definition. I have read a thousand definitions in my effort to synergies this inexhaustible definition but the Bible offers the best. Here it is 

“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love"
(1 John 4:8 ASV emphases by me). 

It seems so clear yet many have confused this definition. I have too in time past. I was curious why Jesus who is described as the Spirit and Word would summarize succinctly the ten commandment given to Moses into just two: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. The second is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these”. (Mark 12:30-31 ASV emphases by me). I was puzzled that Jesus gave this commandment that we should love the Lord with our heart (emotion), with our soul (spirit), with our mind (rational thought or brain) and with our strength (body). So, the totality of man is to love God and if we don’t love we don’t know God and if we don’t know God then we deny is essence in us. That is it!

Until a man fully knows himself, he is not capable of love. - Kelvin

God knows this secret, you cannot love anybody more than you love yourself but until you know yourself you cannot claim to love yourself.

You cannot love what you do not know. - Kelvin

Someone once said “It takes a life time to know someone”.  You do not need a life time to know who is not going where you are going. All you need to know is where you are going and who is a worthy companion to take that walk with you. Will s(he) go the whole nine yards despite the stormy days, the dark clouds, the sunny days and the raining days. Where you are going in life will determine who you think should come along. That sole decision is everything, believe me!

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. The second is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these”.
(Mark 12:30-31 ASV emphases by me)

We are asked to love but not just with our emotion, not just with our brain, not just with our spirit and not just with our body but with everything. So, it takes everything to love someone. Love is a deliberate, purposeful, well planned choice we make and not the spur of the moment, or a butterfly in our tummy, or some sensual feeling we flow with. It takes all to love! So, you should ask yourself if this is love; how have I been loving? Maybe, you have loved like this but you got heart broken, my bad! Then you need to read this again, you need your brain to love (rational choice, well thought and well planned).

Someone once said to me: If you don’t know where you are going anywhere will look like it. You cannot set out on a journey with someone else unless you know exactly where you are going. Relationship is more of a gift that was given at creation. God made man for this purpose. I am mostly intrigued by the words of my friend, he once told me the word relationship is more like having a relation in a ship and they all have to decide where the ship should go, and certainly everyone has a different destination. So, who will be the captain of the ship? Funny! I always laugh whenever he comes up with this story not because of what he said but because of how I pictured it in my head. I am wondering, if I meet someone I don't know and we both decide to board a ship. How can we both get to our destinations without strives. There will be raging storms, dark clouds and all sort of situations will arise but how can we both maintain our cool and stay together.

Relationship is gift, no man can live in isolation. - Kelvin

It is impossible to live without relating – talking to someone, sharing with someone, being with someone, and living with someone. No matter what your idea, power and strength might be, you sure need someone. Everybody does!

You need people to be anything no matter your talent or qualification or profile. You are nothing without people. - Kelvin

God gives us relatives; thank God, we can choose our friends. - Addison Mizner

God determines your parent and they are the first people you sure will have a relationship with and this is what forms your basic ideas about relationship. I wish I had to choose, maybe you wish that too. This is reality, no one has ever chosen his/her parent and you have got to be the best you can be despite all the environmental flaws that tends to dictate who we should be instead of who we are. This imprint given to us forms the basis of how we perceive the world. Someone once said, we cannot choose who we love. That is absurd, I beg the difference. We cannot leave the most important thing in life - love – to chance. It is deliberate well planned and purposeful act. Choose who you love and choose carefully because s(he) can make you or ruin you.

The “in-love” feeling is mostly confused with love, when you are in this euphoric state, nothing seems to make sense; you lose touch with reality and we live in the dream world.   Dr. Dorothy Tennov, a psychologist, has done long-range studies on the in-love phenomenon, she coined the word "limerence" for her 1979 book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in-love to define the idea that had grown out of her work in the mid-1960s, when she interviewed over 500 people on the topic of love. Limerence has been defined by one writer as "an involuntary interpersonal state that involves intrusive, obsessive, and compulsive thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that are dependent on perceived emotional reciprocation from the object of interest". This chemical induced feeling of blindness is believed to last approximately for two to three years and it can even last longer in distance or secret relationship. It is an insane state majorly controlled by chemicals which soon ware off and the wart in your partner becomes obvious and all you want to do at this point is walk away. I feel your pain!

I picked this quote as my best quote by Louis de Bernières, he said “Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of eternal passion. That is just being "in-love" which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in-love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love, have roots that grow towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two”.

I wish you all the best as you choose who you love, choose wisely!!


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