Love your neighbor as you love yourself. A principle we have all been taught since we were young. But it brings me to ask the question. What exactly is love???

Is love a gap or agape? The question remains hollow.

My own philosophy is that it is a gap. Do we ever find true love? We all have lost loved ones in our life. Have you ever noticed a pattern that once you lose the person you loved so much, it changes you forever. Attempts to fill the gap one way or another often results in another gap at the worst. With each new relationship one enters an entirely new vortex is opened. Never the same.

Why do we fall in love just so that we end up heartbroken? Heart or hurt, write it as you wish, but take heart, for you will be hurt.

So here we are heart hurt and no idea on how to move on. How on earth did we find ourselves in this situation in the first place? Well, I’ll tell you.

There is a thin line between love and hate as they say. What they don’t tell us is that these lines run parallel to each other and contrary to popular belief, we are not on either side but in the middle of the lines. Actually, we ARE the thin line they are talking about;

We have the power to decide who we hate and who we love.

An objectionable few, through sophism, would narrate that;

We have the power to control who we hate and who we love.

Perhaps.

But…

The aspect of choice, apodictic.

The aspect of control, shared.

For you cannot do it alone without interpolation. Joint evil effort in most cases.

Understanding the dynamics of love and hate and applying them subjectively, might help.

On one end, we find married couples that once hated and swore never to even be seen together. They now seem to have somehow eaten humble pie and even have children who look like a precise mash up of both parents.

Yes, true ‘love’ as you may call it, in most instances starts with denial.

Somehow, for some, it progresses to dancing behind a tree or under the rain on a sunny day while singing Indian songs.

Yes. Love is nonsensical.

Love is a lacuna that can never be filled. Some even feel the void after trying to fill this void.

Moving on, I would advise that if one really wanted to move on and hate (for lack of a better word) a person, then the only way is to love him/her.

Accept that you love a certain character and somehow your yin gets activated and surely the matrix takes recourse and you start finding (not looking) for reasons to hate that person.

On the other extreme, the people we thought were our true love, as we all were disillusioned during adolescent, we never ended up with. For those that were deluded at a later adult stage, they also ended up hating that person for one reason or another.

I reiterate. Hate is only enjoyed or possible for humans if it is shared. “The enemy of your enemy is my enemy” symbolic that one may feel a certain abhorrence towards someone merely because the person is also hated by someone else. Yes, for one to remain evil he/she needs similar backing. That notwithstanding, there is good in every body. 

In contrast, what of an instance where one is in love?

For some strange reason, the human self, portrays a bit of selfishness and does not want to share the person they love with another. The selfishness is part of the minor yin in the yang. According to Taoism, there is no evil in the yin, only good.

All in all, the circumgyration of the yang in yin and the yin in yang, besides and within, is necessary towards understanding the gap of love.

My brother shares a different, if not an extension of the same, philosophy and opines that, love, is agape. There are those that believe that somehow it always boils down to self-love. Once one is abundant with self-love, then they will not seek it from another who also has the same void of lack of self-love.

Love is never felt to its epitome because it is not a finishing line craved by the diseased. If love cannot be embraced in its true totality as incomplete, a journey travelled by the blind that the eyes prove futile. For it is in the silence of the soul that the journey is appreciated. A language that only givers can grasp. For the taker does not take from others but from his own.

A gap in my thoughts, he claims, but listens; In order to truly love someone, one must appreciate and notice their faults first. See a woman without make up first so that we may later truly appreciate the ‘fenty‘ in plenty.

Love does not notice the difference. Plenty or not, love is naked and cannot be caged.

Agape in his thoughts, my brother rants rhetorically that seeking love exogenous, is an illusion. So why don’t we understand love? Could it be that it is that we cannot understand love because God is love? To try and understand God would just be blasphemous. We do not understand ourselves and yet we try to understand the Almighty.

God understands us, that’s all that matters. Do not try understand him. Just follow his command  and appreciate the guidance. And THAT! Without question. Is what faith is. It is what foundates our belief system.

In bon mot I am put to my place and tasked; once the sun is at zenith, remove my shades, appreciate the light. Content or not, I am asked to come with content and contend within context, that too much light, is darkness.