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Is love a necessity or just good therapy
Mark Wignall
Thursday, February 14, 2008
IN a time not so long ago when love was at the height of its heady season and life cried out to the adventurous, the young man held the hand offered and said a simple, "Pleased to meet you." It was his first day on the job and he was being introduced to all.
It was a morning like any other, an office like any other and the protocols would have played out in familiar fashion, except for the fact that he lingered while looking at her. That extra stare was what did it. A huge afro, large, round earrings and a hint of 'trouble' in what the eyes and toothy grin promised. Within six months the young man, not yet 21 years old, had been able to convince himself that his life would be worth nothing if the 19-year-old beauty was not in it, day in, day out. What did it was that formless, irrational emotion known as love and the need to possess, physically and spiritually, the human object of one's desire. In pursuing her, he pleaded with love to give him love in return, but in the selfishness that is romantic love, in true Hollywood tradition, he wanted her to love him exclusively. And, even if she was not as moved as he was to head blindly towards 'living happily ever after', he was prepared for a compromise. "I will do the loving for both of us," he stupidly reasoned.
Fairy tales exist in the pages of books and love is best expressed in the eyes of a child. Persons in love are hopelessly irrational, roaming in and out between fairy tales and making the claim, the shout that what is being felt is happening nowhere else. "You can't understand what I am feeling," is often said by inexperienced young women to their mothers who may have doubts about the young man lurking around on the periphery of their daughter's exposed emotions. "Sure, sure, dear," is the best response because in truth, the mother may have felt the same exquisite irrationality many years ago but, it was hers, not her daughter's. Love never enters through the front or the back door, but when it appears it fills the room and confounds everyone caught in its grasp. The mother sees 'future' and 'life' while the daughter's only concern is to be somewhere locked in his arms. To hell with tomorrow!
Sometime in the 1940s my father (88) wrote to my mother (deceased two years now) at a time when he was hopelessly struck by her and figured that the only 'contact' he could have with her was through writing. He opened the letter with, 'My pen has now become the supreme commander of my heart.' I'm not even sure if it was original, but the point I believe was made. Rational men become beautiful fools when faced with the thought of loving and possessing beautiful women. Is there a 'need' to love or, is the whole driven by sex? And if it is driven by sex, is there something known as 'sexual need' rather than the quite understandable 'sexual desire'?
Today, the young and some of the old will be caught up in purchasing gifts, especially fruit baskets and flowers for their loved ones. In truth it is not a serious time, an important day. Like Christmas and Mother's Day it has been hijacked by commerce, but since it is established, like religion, fighting it is quite useless. In any event, if it brings people together in a celebration of romantic love, it has a supporter in me.
Anthropologists have not identified a time when the primitive family was anti-social. As social beings it would be easy to draw the early conclusion that the 'need' for sex was formed out of the need to keep the family unit, the pack, the village, the town, humanity going. In more modern times it is often said that the male of the human species allowed himself to be conned by the female into attaching love to a human need to merge sexually. That argument buys into the side of the human male as not being too far removed from his primal urges. Somewhere along the way the female saw man's affinity to mate with her, her sisters and her friends as the very antithesis of 'society' so she conspired with unknown deities to enchant the male with romantic 'love'. At some later stage the male decided to play by the rules openly (love, marriage) while surreptitiously he had to be true to the sexual make-up of his DNA.
In all of this I cannot debunk the 'love as therapy' bit. While a man or a woman cannot go to any shopping mall and say, "Let me have two cases of love", there are many outlets, here and abroad which are into the business of putting man and woman together in love and harmony. While we all cannot be blithering idiots, constantly throwing our love status on those who may be lonely, it is indeed good to be in love with one who loves you. Second best is loving someone who loves you more. Third best is having someone loving you, but in vain. Worst is loving someone who will never love you. It is not quite as simple as that, but I think you get the picture. It is never pleasurable to watch two people babbling over each other and staring into each other's eyes while all you can do is wrap your mouth around a hamburger and make love to bacon and cheese. For this reason people have a need to be in a relationship which empowers their self-worth.
Billionaires need love like kings, princes and peasants. And once that love is had, is in your presence and has suffused your body and soul, it gives everything else that extra meaning. Personally, there was a time when love flew away from me and it made me into a recluse. It could have been that I had yielded to the 'obsession' side of love which refused to let go long after love had set off on its trip with what I had thought was a one-way ticket.
Today as you celebrate romantic love, one thing needs remembering: love, whether it was had out of a need or simply because it made you feel good, costs money. And, many of you will be feeling the pinch today. Your troubles resume tomorrow in a country teetering on the edge of 'controlled anarchy'.
Today spend quiet time with him/her and don't allow anyone to convince you that you must purchase that expensive gift. If, however, the love brings suspension of plain good sense and you find yourself buying what you cannot afford, you are in good company. Simply because those people in love are not too concerned with anything else but the small space between them.
Enjoy each other.
observemark@gmail.com
Mark Wignall
Thursday, February 14, 2008
IN a time not so long ago when love was at the height of its heady season and life cried out to the adventurous, the young man held the hand offered and said a simple, "Pleased to meet you." It was his first day on the job and he was being introduced to all.
It was a morning like any other, an office like any other and the protocols would have played out in familiar fashion, except for the fact that he lingered while looking at her. That extra stare was what did it. A huge afro, large, round earrings and a hint of 'trouble' in what the eyes and toothy grin promised. Within six months the young man, not yet 21 years old, had been able to convince himself that his life would be worth nothing if the 19-year-old beauty was not in it, day in, day out. What did it was that formless, irrational emotion known as love and the need to possess, physically and spiritually, the human object of one's desire. In pursuing her, he pleaded with love to give him love in return, but in the selfishness that is romantic love, in true Hollywood tradition, he wanted her to love him exclusively. And, even if she was not as moved as he was to head blindly towards 'living happily ever after', he was prepared for a compromise. "I will do the loving for both of us," he stupidly reasoned.
Fairy tales exist in the pages of books and love is best expressed in the eyes of a child. Persons in love are hopelessly irrational, roaming in and out between fairy tales and making the claim, the shout that what is being felt is happening nowhere else. "You can't understand what I am feeling," is often said by inexperienced young women to their mothers who may have doubts about the young man lurking around on the periphery of their daughter's exposed emotions. "Sure, sure, dear," is the best response because in truth, the mother may have felt the same exquisite irrationality many years ago but, it was hers, not her daughter's. Love never enters through the front or the back door, but when it appears it fills the room and confounds everyone caught in its grasp. The mother sees 'future' and 'life' while the daughter's only concern is to be somewhere locked in his arms. To hell with tomorrow!
Sometime in the 1940s my father (88) wrote to my mother (deceased two years now) at a time when he was hopelessly struck by her and figured that the only 'contact' he could have with her was through writing. He opened the letter with, 'My pen has now become the supreme commander of my heart.' I'm not even sure if it was original, but the point I believe was made. Rational men become beautiful fools when faced with the thought of loving and possessing beautiful women. Is there a 'need' to love or, is the whole driven by sex? And if it is driven by sex, is there something known as 'sexual need' rather than the quite understandable 'sexual desire'?
Today, the young and some of the old will be caught up in purchasing gifts, especially fruit baskets and flowers for their loved ones. In truth it is not a serious time, an important day. Like Christmas and Mother's Day it has been hijacked by commerce, but since it is established, like religion, fighting it is quite useless. In any event, if it brings people together in a celebration of romantic love, it has a supporter in me.
Anthropologists have not identified a time when the primitive family was anti-social. As social beings it would be easy to draw the early conclusion that the 'need' for sex was formed out of the need to keep the family unit, the pack, the village, the town, humanity going. In more modern times it is often said that the male of the human species allowed himself to be conned by the female into attaching love to a human need to merge sexually. That argument buys into the side of the human male as not being too far removed from his primal urges. Somewhere along the way the female saw man's affinity to mate with her, her sisters and her friends as the very antithesis of 'society' so she conspired with unknown deities to enchant the male with romantic 'love'. At some later stage the male decided to play by the rules openly (love, marriage) while surreptitiously he had to be true to the sexual make-up of his DNA.
In all of this I cannot debunk the 'love as therapy' bit. While a man or a woman cannot go to any shopping mall and say, "Let me have two cases of love", there are many outlets, here and abroad which are into the business of putting man and woman together in love and harmony. While we all cannot be blithering idiots, constantly throwing our love status on those who may be lonely, it is indeed good to be in love with one who loves you. Second best is loving someone who loves you more. Third best is having someone loving you, but in vain. Worst is loving someone who will never love you. It is not quite as simple as that, but I think you get the picture. It is never pleasurable to watch two people babbling over each other and staring into each other's eyes while all you can do is wrap your mouth around a hamburger and make love to bacon and cheese. For this reason people have a need to be in a relationship which empowers their self-worth.
Billionaires need love like kings, princes and peasants. And once that love is had, is in your presence and has suffused your body and soul, it gives everything else that extra meaning. Personally, there was a time when love flew away from me and it made me into a recluse. It could have been that I had yielded to the 'obsession' side of love which refused to let go long after love had set off on its trip with what I had thought was a one-way ticket.
Today as you celebrate romantic love, one thing needs remembering: love, whether it was had out of a need or simply because it made you feel good, costs money. And, many of you will be feeling the pinch today. Your troubles resume tomorrow in a country teetering on the edge of 'controlled anarchy'.
Today spend quiet time with him/her and don't allow anyone to convince you that you must purchase that expensive gift. If, however, the love brings suspension of plain good sense and you find yourself buying what you cannot afford, you are in good company. Simply because those people in love are not too concerned with anything else but the small space between them.
Enjoy each other.
observemark@gmail.com