What Is Love and What Isn't?
LOVE is a force of nature.
However much we may want to, we can not command, demand, or take away
love, any more than we can command the moon and the stars and the wind
and the rain to come and go according to our whims. We may have some
limited ability to change the weather, but we do so at the risk of
upsetting an ecological balance we don't fully understand. Similarly, we
can stage a seduction or mount a courtship, but the result is more
likely to be infatuation, or two illusions dancing together, than love.
Love is
bigger than you are. You can invite love, but you cannot dictate how,
when, and where love expresses itself. You can choose to surrender to
love, or not, but in the end love strikes like lightening, unpredictable
and irrefutable. You can even find yourself loving people you don't
like at all. Love does not come with conditions, stipulations, addenda,
or codes. Like the sun, love radiates independently of our fears and
desires.
Love
is inherently free. It cannot be bought, sold, or traded. You cannot
make someone love you, nor can you prevent it, for any amount of money.
Love cannot be imprisoned nor can it be legislated. Love is not a
substance, not a commodity, nor even a marketable power source. Love has
no territory, no borders, no quantifiable mass or energy output.
One
can buy sex partners and even marriage partners. Marriage is a matter
for the law, for rules and courts and property rights. In the past, the
marriage price, or dowry, and in the present, alimony and the
pre-nuptial agreement, make it clear that marriage is all about
contracts. But as we all know, marriages, whether arranged or not, may
have little enough to do with love.
Sexual
stimulation and gratification, whether by way of fingers, mouths,
objects, fantasy play, whips and chains, or just plain intercourse, can
certainly be bought and sold, not to mention used to sell other things.
Whether sex should be for sale is another question entirely, but love
itself can not be sold.
One
can buy loyalty, companionship, attention, perhaps even compassion, but
love itself cannot be bought. An orgasm can be bought, but love cannot.
It comes, or not, by grace, of its own will and in its own timing,
subject to no human's planning.
Love
cannot be turned on as a reward. It cannot be turned off as
a punishment. Only something else pretending to be love can be used as a
lure, as a hook, for bait and switch, imitated, insinuated, but the
real deal can never be delivered if it doesn't spring freely from the
heart.
This
doesn't mean that love allows destructive and abusive behaviors to go
unchecked. Love speaks out for justice and protests when harm is being
done. Love points out the consequences of hurting oneself or others.
Love allows room for anger, grief, or pain to be expressed and released.
But love does not threaten to withhold itself if it doesn't get what it
wants. Love does not say, directly or indirectly, "If you are a bad
boy, Mommy won't love you any more." Love does not say, "Daddy's little
girl doesn't do that." Love does not say, "If you want to be loved you
must be nice, or do what I want, or never love anyone else, or promise
you'll never leave me."
Love
cares what becomes of you because love knows that we are all
interconnected. Love is inherently compassionate and empathic. Love
knows that the "other" is also oneself. This is the true nature of love
and love itself can not be manipulated or restrained. Love honors the
sovereignty of each soul. Love is its own law
