Love

Note: In this article, any use of the word “love” refers to true love, meaning not shallow infatuation, or anything of the sort. I mean the kind of deep, unconditional love that two people feel towards each other at all times… Like you hear about in the fairy tales.

                I’m agnostic. Have we all established that? Okay, good. Well agnosticism isn’t just a world view, a sort of in-between set of religious beliefs, it’s also a mindset. You can be agnostic about anything, really. You can be agnostic about whether your socks are clean: “They don’t look bad from over here, but they’re too far away to smell, and I guess they could be dirty.” You can be agnostic about people: “Oh sure, he looks dodgy, but who am I to judge? Maybe he’s a perfectly nice guy.” Or you can be agnostic about whether or not concepts are real: “Well, I suppose it’s possible that [god, absolute truth, morality, happiness, love, etc.] really exists, but I guess I don’t really know… I’m not sure if I’ve experienced it, or if I would know if I did.” See, it doesn’t seem so damn unreasonable, does it? In fact, I’ll bet plenty of theists would be able to relate to my second example. Ha! See, you’re agnostic! Bet you didn’t see that one coming, now go drown yourself in holy water, or drown altar boys in your semen, or whatever it is you do when you're feeling under the weather.

                Well I have an agnostic mindset myself, (also known as a realistic, critical, pragmatic, or reasonable mindset) and it has always served me well. Sure, it’s forced me to believe what  I don’t want to, but truth is always healthier than delusion… Or else you might as well give yourself an IV drip with PCP in it, and spend the rest of your life hallucinating. But I digress. Believe me when I say that it does kill me to look at true love in a very objective way. If you could argue that I still harbor any faith inside of me, (see article on faith) then it would have to be faith in love. True love is something I want to believe in, it’s something that I can hardly imagine the world without. For those of you who believe in love with all of your bloody hearts, go drink some warm milk or something, before I break the fragile little things.

                Now the idea of love, and I mean true love, is just another one of those half-philosophical, half psychological, and half realistic conundrums, which is also a paradox because it has 3 halves, and is somehow only 1 thing. I know that most of you out there, being human beings (and less inclined towards bitterness) will probably be thinking, “Why Ellipsis, of course love exists! Isn’t that obvious, how could it not?” Well it does seem pretty self-evident that love exists, but the operative word there is “seem.” I mean, when you really think about it, what actual evidence do you have that love exists? What you have is media reference, fairytale legend, and pretty much everyone around you seeming to believe in it, albeit perhaps in a different way. Maybe you feel like you've experienced it, but you probably can't really be positive that it was love, and not just infatuation or something similar. Is this starting to sound familiar? Of course it does, it’s those are the same damn reasons that you believe in god!

                Now one could logically suppose that, if someone they know tells them that he found love, then clearly it must exist. By that, I mean that it would be logical to assume if the person in question wasn’t probably an over-sentimental dipshit with as much sense of reality as a schizophrenic on an acid-dosed IV drip. And I’m inclined towards distrust of said hypothetical person for the same reason I don’t believe someone who claims to have met god, it’s just not believable enough to take someone’s word on. What with the varying definitions of the word love, the fact that everyone wants to believe that they've found love, and with emotions and hormones being so able to cloud our judgment and common sense; it’s actually more than likely for someone to believe they have found true love when in reality they didn’t.

                If any of you out there think that you have found love, and actually have, (though I’m honestly not sure you’d know it) then I am sincerely happy for you. Personally, I can think of few worthier achievements in life, and you have my envy. But the thing is that if you tell me the good news, I hope you will understand why I can’t believe you. What with all the confusion and doubt over whether someone else has found love, (mentioned above) the only way to really know that it exists is to find it for yourself. I mean, I could have just described a demographic that doesn’t exist. Maybe all love is flawed, and two people can never truly be happy together forever. If every single relationship harbored some form of conscious or subconscious discontent, then I guess I wouldn’t necessarily know it, meaning that it could very possibly be the case. If you don't understand quite what I mean here, read my article on Absolute Truth. I posted it relatively early on for a reason.

                For all of you who read this, it might be perfectly easy to justify belief in love, at least to yourself. You might see examples of it (or at least what looks like it) all the time and think “Why of course it’s real!” I mean, that doesn’t make you right, but you’re still lucky to have that kind of optimism. Because if love doesn’t exist, then all we can hope for is to find the closest thing, and I get the vague idea that believing in it would probably help you get close to it… But I guess I don’t know, that's kind of off-topic anyway. Anyway, my point is that I, personally, have no reason to believe in love. My parents have been divorced since I was 3, and now hate each other. They both remarried to people that they seem to sometimes hate as much or more than they do each other. I have thought I was in love, when I was young and naïve, and then I realized that I wasn’t really in love, but I was only fooled by my own head into thinking that I was... Oh, the list goes on, but you get the idea. I've always wanted to believe in true love, especially when I was younger, but from the examples I'm given, love doesn't look too believable when looked at critically... Its existence at least isn't a given, like it may be for you.

 Outside of my life, though, the image of love only gets worse. Can you, dear reader, even count all of the stories you’ve heard about husband and wife that don’t end happily? Think of all the fights, the divorce, the violence, the unhappiness, the resentment… Sure, people can still have an okay relationship, at the end of the day, even if it does have its flaws… But that’s just not what we’re looking for. We don’t want wives who we think ruin all of our fun, and who we have to fear the judgment of. Ladies, you don’t want husbands who are often oblivious to your feelings, or too lazy to do anything to make you happy. Sure, these can all be lived with, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re flaws… Is this true love? Is love just having to live with a partner who you know damn well isn’t what you hoped for; mostly because the person is at least okay, and won't leave you? Is this true love, living with the knowledge that your one and only isn’t exactly the “perfect” one for you, and that there are some things about him/her that you will never be content with, and just have to bear? There’s something to be said for loving others for their flaws, but I honestly don’t think that this is the case with most of the examples we see when married couples complain about each other. That seems more like loving someone despite their flaws...

Just to clarify the above paragraph, I really do know what it means to love someone for their flaws. I know that you’ll never meet the perfect man or woman, because human beings don’t naturally tend to function entirely for the sake of impressing the other sex. I guess what I'm talking about is someone whose flaws genuinely don't bother you. I'm talking about loving someone completely, without a shred of doubt over remorse over choosing them, and with the knowledge that there isn't a single thing about them (at least their personality) that you would change.This is, perhaps, the most idealistic idea of true love, if it really exists. To be honest, it seems to me like a infatuation with someone, the kind that you get in when you go through puberty, the kind that makes all week-long highschool couples think they're in love. Maybe that's what love is, just a state of perpetual infatuation with someone... I don't really know.

If you look up the definition of love, you’ll more or less get: “Love: noun, a strong feeling of affection or compassion towards another human being.” This definition is, in my opinion, about as much of an understatement as referring to the Holocaust as "mildly detrimental." To me, love (and I mean true love) is so much deeper than that definition. Love is a feeling that you begin to feel for someone only after a long time, and that doesn't just fade away… It’s the feeling that every single aspect of them is just the way you would have it, and that there is no other person in the world who you would be happier with. Love is an absolute feeling, it’s the knowledge that you will never tire of someone, that they can never be replaced in your heart, and that they are perhaps the most special and important thing in the world to you. I know, it sounds really cheesy, coming from a cynic, but I’m not saying it isn’t a fairy tale… It might or might not be. My point is that true love is incompatible with doubt, and resentment. I mean, maybe in realistic terms, love is never perfect. Maybe in the real world, two people will never see each other, and think that there is nothing there to change, or at least not permanently. If this is the case, then okay, fine, I guess that real love isn't like the fairytale "true love." I guess what I’m debating here isn’t whether love exists, but whether it exists in the form that we all hope that it does.

Maybe I’m really talking about perfection. Can perfection exist in a world as flawed as ours? Is it really possible to meet a person, get to know them, and realize that they are absolutely perfect for you? You know, it doesn’t even need to be in absolute terms. There are almost 7 billion of us, you’ll never find the single person in the world who fits you best. But can you ever really find someone who you’ll never have any regrets about whatsoever? Someone that you’ll literally be able to spend the rest of your life with, and always be happy about it? That, to me, is finding true love. I guess that anything near that general description is considered “finding love,” by today's standards, but finding someone "close enough" isn't really finding what is generally considered true love, is it? Maybe true love doesn't exist, and maybe it's impossible or astronomically improbable to find. Maybe only certain people are able to find love. Maybe love isn’t even real in any form, and we really just have to find the happiest way to live and accept that anything better is a fantasy. Who knows, maybe somewhere out there is the one and only person for me… Maybe I’ll find love some day, and maybe you will too. Maybe we’ll just think we did, and be happy enough that way that it doesn’t make a difference. But I don't know, I'm only an ellipsis... Good luck to all of you out there, though.

Sincerely,

The Ellipsis