Love without action is not the kind of love I want to be involved with.
Love is as love does: True or False?
- Thread starter Gaze
- Start date
Love is an abstract word that is easily taken for granted. It's probably too big of a concept for words to adequetely communicate. Much gets lost and muddled in translation.
I'm skeptical about the feelings involved in what defines love. Feelings are things words can't always capture. But we do the best with the words we've got. An intense need for someone's affection or support is called love. An intense need to express those things, too. But I am skeptical because all too often, people use the word 'love' to justify destructive behaviors. "I'm jealous because I love you," being one example.
I believe in a holistic approach, which involves feelings, actions, and then the words to paint these things.
At the core, to love is to refuse to harm, and it is all those actions that one conducts to contribute to well-being, and the motivation from feeling to do so. So far, that is all the sense I can make of what is called love.
You can't say one thing and do the contradictory thing. You can't say, "I love you" and then hurt the person regularly, for example. A relationship built on pain and deception and dominance cannot be love because these things work to destroy a person.
But generally speaking, I suppose you could love someone or something from a distance. But I don't think that is passive. If you generally love people, then you aren't going to exploit them or use them to your advantage. If you love someone who does not feel the same way towards you, then you leave them be and wish them well. If you love a tree, you're not going to want to cut it down. You'll leave it in the yard to live...
I feel that way about people in general, the passionate affection part lies dormant until challenged
I'm skeptical about the feelings involved in what defines love. Feelings are things words can't always capture. But we do the best with the words we've got. An intense need for someone's affection or support is called love. An intense need to express those things, too. But I am skeptical because all too often, people use the word 'love' to justify destructive behaviors. "I'm jealous because I love you," being one example.
I believe in a holistic approach, which involves feelings, actions, and then the words to paint these things.
At the core, to love is to refuse to harm, and it is all those actions that one conducts to contribute to well-being, and the motivation from feeling to do so. So far, that is all the sense I can make of what is called love.
You can't say one thing and do the contradictory thing. You can't say, "I love you" and then hurt the person regularly, for example. A relationship built on pain and deception and dominance cannot be love because these things work to destroy a person.
But generally speaking, I suppose you could love someone or something from a distance. But I don't think that is passive. If you generally love people, then you aren't going to exploit them or use them to your advantage. If you love someone who does not feel the same way towards you, then you leave them be and wish them well. If you love a tree, you're not going to want to cut it down. You'll leave it in the yard to live...
I feel that way about people in general, the passionate affection part lies dormant until challenged
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Even I had just a few close relations, my experience showed that love in me can not exist just by itself. There always are emotional reasons to have it inside me. And I have never experienced love as a ceaseless circuit of open and unstoppable feeling. I mean I can have the idea or thought in my memory and expectations, but I never can have calm love in me all the time like unstoppable energy. That shows that I need the stimulus that I would let to grow for that feeling inside me and confirmation for my doubts about that feeling. So, I don't believe that love can be found in a person without reasonable start or efforts to keep it growing.
