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Is love worth it?

lifegazer

Philosopher
L
Joined
Oct 9, 2003
Messages
5,047
Straying away from my usual topic here. I need to explore why we seek love outside of ourselves and whether that exploration is beneficial to the soul.
Some plonkers will say "Define love.". My response would be that anybody who has had good parents; kids; decent siblings; a long and meaningful relationship with somebody of the sex they are attracted to; very good friends; even a relationship with a pet - will absolutely understand what I'm talking about. Love is a feeling and feelings cannot be adequately explained. Yet neither can the sensations that we experience be explained.
Imagine talking to a blind person that has never met another person that has experienced the sensation of sight before. He might ask you what that sensation was all about but you wouldn't be able to convey the reality of that experience to him. Yet you see.
That's exactly how it is with love and my response to anybody who asks me to define love is either that they are unlucky not to have had any of the aforementioned experiences, or they are one of those unfortunate cold-souls that simply are unable to do so.
Regardless, that doesn't stop me exploring the concept of love with those of you who understand it through direct experience.

Personally, I've had all but one of the aforementioned experiences and am very familiar with the concept and feeling of love.
... Yet I've also experienced the pain of love departed. And there can be no greater pain than to lose the love of somebody else that you dearly love.
I've suffered such pain three times in my life and it feels like hell.
I don't particularly want to go into details. Neither do I ask of details from the reader... though feel free to share if you think it might help the purpose of this thread.

... My concern, is whether it benefits us to love life or even things that will eventually break our heart by departing from our lives... via death, choice, or circumstances beyond their control.
What bothers me most, is that anything you love "out there", is destined to break your heart because nothing "out there" is permanent.

So is 'love' worth it? Are we seeking love in the wrong place ("out there"). Is there a love that will never ever break your heart?

This is completely different to the subject which I usually explore, but I make no apologies if I eventually refer back to that subject.

Feel free to open your heart... and intelligence.
 
I think it's totally worth it. The fact that causes you pain when it's gone gives you a clue of how much it is worth when it is there. It's hard to let it go, but we must learn to cope with it. We can't have the best in life without some tragedy here and there, can we?
I don't think I would have been better off without any of those experiences that ended up in a broken heart. You could say that every time you take a chance on love you're taking a risk. I would agree, but I say it's a risk worth taking. Because love is one of the things that make life worth living, and outweighs any broken heart scenario. However if you have too many loves lost in a relatively short period, that may screw your life quite a bit. You could be unlucky*. But love is not the only kind of tragedy that can get you down. Being unlucky sucks! :( But it's not likely to last forever.

* I don't believe in 'luck', but you know what I mean.
 
Is it really better to have loved and lost, than never have loved at all. Of course.


I dont know if this reasoning can truely answer the question in full, but I've always considered the idea in these terms:

Love is worth as you want it to be. If you value personal relationships and emotional bonds, then love is clearly worth something to you. And if you see love as nothing more than poison disguised as candy, then it isnt.

That seems to make the meaningfulness and worth of love more of a subjective truth rather than an objective one.
 
I was very much in love, once, and the end of it hurt like nothing else. But overall, it was a net positive experience, and I'd put myself in risk of getting hurt again for it.
 
I particularly like this way of expressing the connection between love and loss: Grief is the tax we pay on loving other people -- it comes due all at once, at the end.

That's the way I plan to look at it, if I outlive my husand or any other significant people in my life.
 
I've had love of family, friends and pets, but never sexual attraction. I'm not really young or anything, just... disinterested.

As for love being worthwhile or not, I would say it doesn't matter. You can't choose to love or not to love, it just happens. Should you run away from it when it happens? Of course not. No more than you would run away from any other experience. As with everything, it has its ups and downs, but the positive will outweigh the negative if you have a good attitude.

As for a love that will never break your heart, how about a love of life, or more specifically, experience? If you have a good outlook, any situation can be positive. Even death.
 
DaveW said:
I was very much in love, once, and the end of it hurt like nothing else. But overall, it was a net positive experience, and I'd put myself in risk of getting hurt again for it.
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oh my, yes indeed. completely agree.
 
lifegazer said:
Straying away from my usual topic here. I need to explore why we seek love outside of ourselves and whether that exploration is beneficial to the soul.
Some plonkers will say "Define love.". My response would be that anybody who has had good parents; kids; decent siblings; a long and meaningful relationship with somebody of the sex they are attracted to; very good friends; even a relationship with a pet - will absolutely understand what I'm talking about. Love is a feeling and feelings cannot be adequately explained.
Click to expand...
Call me a "plonker" (whatever that is) if you will, but there are many kinds of love. Some are good. Some are not. Some mean everything. Some mean nothing.

As a great "lover" of poetry and the arts, I know that the meaning of love has been and will be under debate for all time. You can't possibly catalogue all the ways that "love" has been used (though I'd "love" to see you try) so just throwing it out as a word opens us up to all sorts of ambiguities.

So let me reply in general. Love is worth it. We couldn't survive as a species without it. Whether it be empathy that causes us to take care of our fellow humans, or lust that causes us to create more of our fellow humans, it is one of the hallmarks of humanity. Is humanity worth keeping around? Good question, but speaking as a practicing human, I say yes.
 
Since I find myself utterly unable to reply to LG without mockery, I'll turn this one over to Puss...

Puss: Should one abstain from lighting a fire on a cold night in fear of the inevitability of the fuel's consumption?

Should one abjure the beauty of a garden in full bloom, knowing in winter it will be dead and grey?

Should one pass up a well-prepared and succulent feast because it will soon turn all to sh--(MdC: Puss, be good.) Oh, sorry, carrying on.

Nay, nay, and again, nay. If one should turn away love for fear of grief, they deserve the cold, colourless, starved life they make. Love or be damned, thus spake Puss.
 
Love and Truth

We see by the light of the sun (Truth) and are sustained by its warmth (Love). So yes, love is readily definable in terms of truth and vice versa. While here, love is also a variable of The Good ... "Truth is the vessel and Good is contained within." And hey, if you don't believe me, go ask Plato.

While here's an interesting quote from Emanuel Swedenborg's notion of Love. From the Bayside Swedenborgian Church page, Divine Love and Wisdom -1 ...


Love Is Man's Life

People know that love exists, but they do not know what love is. They realize that love exists because of everyday language--for example, people say, "He loves me," "The ruler loves his subjects," "The subjects love their ruler," "The husband loves his wife," "The mother loves her children, and they love her," and "He loves his country, his fellow-citizen, his neighbor." People say the same sort of thing about impersonal objects, for example, "He loves this or that thing." But in spite of the fact that "love" is so pervasively present in speech, scarcely anyone knows what love is.

Since people cannot formulate any concept of it when they reflect on it, they say either that it isn't really anything, or that it is merely something that flows in from sight, hearing, touch, and conversation and therefore exerts an influence. People are utterly unaware that it is their very life--not just the general life of their whole body and the general life of all their thoughts, but the life of their every element.

This is something a wise person can perceive as he says, "If you take away affection, which belongs to love, can you think anything? Can you do anything? To the extent that affection, which belongs to love, cools off, do not thought and speech and action cool off?. And as the one warms up, do not the others warm up?" But this wise person is not perceiving these matters on the basis of a thought that love is a person's life, but on the basis of his experience that this is how things happen.
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Tricky:
"We couldn't survive as a species without it."

Why? Other species do. Apparently.

---------------------------------------

Defining love is impossible. Yet it exists as do my sensations, thoughts and other indefinable-emotions exist... like the feeling of inner-pain associated with the loss of love itself.

Yet where does this feeling ultimately come from? How can we reduce this indefinable feeling to the collision of two or more chemicals? Can two bricks collide and yield a 'vapour' of love?

Am I slave to love? Do chemicals and genes force me to love people? Or is love my own slave... freely given or freely withheld?

Lots of questions... a need to explore.
 
lifegazer
<snip> My concern, is whether it benefits us to love life or even things that will eventually break our heart by departing from our lives... via death, choice, or circumstances beyond their control.
What bothers me most, is that anything you love "out there", is destined to break your heart because nothing "out there" is permanent.

So is 'love' worth it? Are we seeking love in the wrong place ("out there"). Is there a love that will never ever break your heart?
Click to expand...
yes it’s worth it, if nor no other reason that weighing up the benefits against the losses and coming up 51/49% one must also remember that grief, also, is not permanent. One can take consolation that you did your best with the time available.
 
Love is eternal

Love provides hope for life

If you do not have love you would be like a plant without sun.
 
lifegazer said:
Tricky:
"We couldn't survive as a species without it."

Why? Other species do. Apparently.
Click to expand...
Most social species have what could, by most defintions, be called love. They care for each other and protect each other.

Also, most higher species have maternal instincts which would certainly be indistinguishable from what we, as humans, call "motherly love".

Yes, some other species do not have anything that could be remotely called love. If we were them, then our species, homo Sapiens would no longer be around.

But there is some evidence that some humans are in the midst of an evolutionary change in which the role of love is greatly minimized. I refer, of course, to the Republican Party.
 
As for what love is, I’d say it’s a feeling, and I’d say you’re right that you couldn’t convey the exact experience to one who’s never had it.

You could though explain it in terms of wants and actions. When you’re in love, the wants of the person you love become your wants; when they hurt, it hurts you; when they are happy, you will be too. So a person who’s never loved could easily detect love. It’s obvious in the guy who works all day, in a job he hates, just to feed and shelter 3 other humans who aren’t even him.

Mind if I continue prattling on about one of my favorite subjects? :)

I’ve had one romantic Love in my life and that’s lasted since my teens.

A long-term romantic love is kind of odd. There is, of course, the wildly irrational and emotional aspects of it, where you can’t wait to see them when you’re apart, and a mere touch on the shoulder from them can magically set everything that went wrong that day right. But other aspects of it are kind of zen-like, like breathing; you do things for them because that’s just what you do. It’s what you’ve become, half of a larger working machine.

With a romantic relationship you build your love like you’d create a sculpture--you start with a raw chunk of rock in base brute attraction and over the rest of your lives form something beautiful. But with your children it’s absolute and undeniable right from their first breath, or even earlier. The day our kids were born may as well have been the death of the old me. Same old world but, for me, everything changed. That night it was all so emotionally pure and clear; I was theirs from then on; I worked for them; I was now living in their world, not mine anymore. It was and still is overwhelming.

I undoubtedly find the most pleasure out of life through my family, but is it worth the possible loss? No question. Yes.

Sure, on the down side, I never really knew true vulnerability until the day my children were born. I’ve never feared more than for them, and if I ever lost any of my immediate family I’m sure I’d never recover. But I’m not sure I’d even want to recover if I could. As others have said, once the balance is tallied, the love and the loved one are more important to me than any future personal loss. I think I’d almost want to hang on to the pain, for the other feelings with which it would be associated.

You’re saying “anything you love "out there", is destined to break your heart because nothing "out there" is permanent”. But so what? Once you’re in love, it’s not only your heart that concerns you. You’re pleased through the relationship, both hearts and their histories. That past has a solidity and worth that’s not lost with a lost loved one.
 
Scot C. Trypal said:
You’re saying “anything you love "out there", is destined to break your heart because nothing "out there" is permanent”. But so what?
Click to expand...

Exactly. Permanence is inability to change- stagnation. Stagnation in romance, or art, or employment leads to boredom and "death" of the very thing one wanted to be "permanent". Love is a juggling act- changing and growing just enough to keep it fresh, keeping just enough the same to avoid growing apart.

If anybody ever wants a taste of the Total Perspective Vortex, I recommend watching another human being getting shoved out of another- especially one in which you are personally responsible for. :)
 
I'd have to say that love is very much worth the pain. (especialy the whips and chains, but I digress)
When it's good, it's VERY good. When it's bad, It's also Very good! (oops, I digress again)

Love is such a large part of our humanity (all kinds of love, not just the procreating kind ) if it was'nt for love, mankind would not have amounted to much.
And speaking of love, I must cut this short or my "love" will cut me short.
 
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