QUESTION: Do you believe in true love?
ANSWER: I picked this question because it provoked me. I was forced to admit, against my will, that the question filled me with longing, grief, hope, cynicism, inspiration, bitterness, romanticism, irritation. The question followed me around, sat with me in the car, laid down with me at night in bed, and got into the shower with me in the morning.
I hate this question. You didn't ask me what is true love. You didn't ask me how you find it. You didn't ask me about its nature or even its likelihood.
You asked me, the guy typing at this keyboard, if I believe in it.
A politically correct therapist would answer by saying it depends on what you mean by true love. Do you mean love in the moral sense? A psycho-emotional sense? An existential reality? A feeling? An act?
I would ask you all those questions so I could push your question away. Because I know darn well what you mean.
My rational response is to tell you true love is for kids. Idealism. Delusion. Or maybe I could concede that there's a "true love feeling" at the beginning of most love relationships, but enlightened people should well expect the true love feeling to erode in favor of a more grown-up, rational love.
My rational self provides safe sanctuary from your question.
The scientist in me would explain -- read: explain away -- the experience of true love by talking about psychological projections and pheromones and the biological imperative of baby-making. Survival of the species. That sort of thing. And I would do that because then I could reduce your question and my answer to a kind of Jane Goodall documentary. Given time, chimpanzees will someday exchange Hallmark cards. The religionist in me would gleefully jump on your question and say that God is love and there is no greater love than a man's willingness to die for another man. Agape, the Greeks called it -- the love that sacrifices for the well-being of another human being. I would quote you the famous "love passage" from I Corinthians 13: "Love is patient, love is kind . . . " I think all that is, well, the Gospel truth. Literally. But I'm still left wondering if I'm dodging your question, this time with my passionate piety. I used to be a member of the ordained clergy. I presided at a lot of weddings. Once I was outside on the neatly trimmed lawn of the Arizona Biltmore, standing before a bright-eyed groom and a beautiful bride. Family and friends, all pressed and dressed in tuxes and gowns. But as the wedding progressed, it was the incidental hotel guests that caught my eye. They moved in swimsuits, flip-flops, robes and Bermuda shorts around the periphery of the wedding. Bellhops toted luggage and discarded room service trays. Lawn maintenance guys wielded rakes and trimmers. Every last one of these people paused and stared. A woman stopped and tugged at her man's sleeve. She pointed at us, wanting him to watch with her for a moment.
What were they looking at? They were looking into a window of hope. Hope in true love. They were looking at a bride and a groom and listening to their own souls say, "Oh look, there are two people who have decided to take an irrational, unscientific, perhaps not all that pious plunge into the hope that true love is real." Yes, I believe in true love. And it is most inconvenient and troubling. Because true love can take you apart at the seams. Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas. Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal. Powered by Yellowbrix.
Source: Relationships & Love
