What Is Love? A Warning for Valentine's Day

Beware of poisoned flowers and poisoned relationships...

I am proud to look like a hillbilly and NOT as an “academic.”

---

For my wife and me, our love is what we call “a package deal”:

Love, just like “happiness,” is not a feeling: both are parts of the process of personal interaction and the total of one’s thoughts, feelings, decisions, and actions. Feelings come and go, and they don’t necessarily result in love, and love doesn’t always generate feelings.

Christians use Corinthians 1,13:1-7, and it is a popular quote to describe how love behaves, and it’s in line with the “western” tradition:

13 If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

This sounds quite a bit like a threat, but somehow, it fails to clarify much, except that I am trash for the incinerator, unless “I have love.” How could I ever be sure even if I managed to do my best most of the time? (And no, I am not without fault.)

Also, to my best knowledge, the 2nd commandment has been misinterpreted. “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” would rarely result in love. The original goes as “Love your neighbor, because (s)he is like you.”

The conundrum, at least to me, prevails:

What is love?

How can today’s people relate to all this?

Young people, thanks to popular culture, have been misguided to confuse love with sex and infatuation. They are not told that those who start sex at 15, don’t care for it by the time they are 30, unless they get into perversions, which is how traditional mass murderers evolve, which reminds me of the Monster of Dusseldorf, Peter Kürten…

For that matter, my wife and I waited a whole year before we kissed, and it’s working. Even when we don’t kiss. :)

Popular culture is also poisoning people’s sense of beauty. Forget that shaving for women started over a hundred years ago, when women in brothels were forced to do it for “sanitary” reasons (does that ring a bell?).

Still, all the toxic cosmetics on women’s faces are also meant to destroy them, too:

Only adherence to what is right can give a backbone to love

“Don’t pour your pearls before swine, because they will devour you.” is my shortened version of the classic warning.¹

Those who are indiscriminately “good” to everyone can easily encourage or even reinforce viciousness. In return, even the sheep around them can turn into wolves and devour them². At best, they are treated with derision, contempt, and neglect, because they are considered weak, stupid, or both³. Only from a position of power can one afford to be generous. John Wayne’s third maxim can also play a role:

So, what is love?

My favorite is Fielding’s definition from Tom Jones:

ESTEEM AND GRATITUDE.

You must be aware of the various sources that tell you how good gratitude is for you, but they never mention “esteem” and the fact that it works best, when both are mutual. No matter what self-help books claim, a person cannot force themselves to feel grateful: one is either capable of it or not, although it can easily arrive years or even decades after it would have been due. Still, it’s better late than never.

Between two people who “love” each other, that means mutual respect, which is most likely easier to understand even for those who don’t read classics.

The closest one for Valentine’s Day (which is most likely utilized in the mass extermination project⁴) was when I came up with a two-page card. The first page said, “How do I know you love me?” On the second page, you found, “Because you are still laughing at my jokes.”

This one is for my wife:

1. “Do not give that which is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, for they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” (Matthew, 7:6)

2. Albert Schweitzer has something to say about that:

3. Christ’s admonition of “turn turning your other face” was supposed to mean that you must not resist the “authorities” openly, because your action will make others to suffer. Unfortunately, that’s not how it’s interpreted most of the time and even led to “Christian” opinions that even prohibited self-defense.

4.