What is your definition of “love”? The word “love” significantly means a lot to everyone. People who hate “love” are those who are deeply hurt by it. Fairy tales or fantasized love is the most talked-about among the teenagers. What is your perspective on “love”? Being loved, being pampered, receiving a rose, a teddy bear, a love-card, candle light dinner, romantic music? Unfortunately, most people talk about love in terms of to be loved and to be loveable. Our consumerist culture motivates people to be thingtified meaning to dehumanize oneself to a product and one’s purpose is to be marketable or to be sellable. So someone has to be packaged nicely in order to be “attractive”. This act is poignantly expressed in contemporary narcissistic culture. Therefore, when two persons meet and fall in love with each other, they think as if they have found the best product available on the market. This kind of love merely lasts for there will be always a better product available on the market. They will soon find the expiry date on their partner and opt to find another. This quest for love is often characterized and motivated by loneliness and lack of love. Someone would say, “I feel so lonely, I need love to enhance my life”. “I will be happy if I can have him or her as my life-partner”. Our contemporary culture has indeed reduces love to thing for us to own and to keep.
Do you really comprehend “love”? We cannot discuss love apart from the essence of God. God is love (1 John 4.18). Love is not something to be hoarded for. Love is an active being. Love is giving and by giving it will not impoverish the giver. Love is a power which produces love. It creates life and joy. Meister Eckhart succinctly explained on self-love, “If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself.” (Erich Fromm, The Art of Love, p. 58). Our major problem in the matter of love is we tend to idolize the person we love. When we fall for someone, we are attracted to idolize the person and to look at the person in our own fantasy. This is the reason why most lovers will eventually plunge into disappointment. The definition of “love” is greatly described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13.4-7. The definition of love by Paul denotes the “activeness of love”. Love is supposed to be an active act. Love is not about “trade”. Trading mindset will eventually wear love away. When someone regards love as a trade, their purpose to love is to gain more love. Hence, love is understood as an act of exchange “I give love in order to receive more love”.
We can only love when are one or in union with God. Since the fall, humanity has become separated from God. The desire to seek oneness is strong and vividly expression in human’s effort to overcome loneliness and misery. Therefore, it is of paramount important to be reunited with our Creator. Our Lord Jesus Christ says, “Father, just as You are in Me and I am in You. May they also be in us... I in them and You in Me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that You sent me and have loved them even as You have loved me” (John 17.21-23). To love is to share and to create inner joy and liveliness. Love is not merely about romantic talk or enchanting gift but it is beyond that. True love is peaceful, serene and tranquil. A true love is a transformative love that builds life.
