The thing is that love could be in the spotlight or it could be greed and selfishness. Individualistic cultures lead to the latter.
Mabel Encinas
After the commercial wave in the name of love, it is worth thinking about its meaning.
When I was at Uni, we discussed if love existed. We wondered if it was a Christian idea impress upon us since early childhood.
Maybe it was a Hollywood invention and a part of the sales strategy of the show business.
We weighted if love could be an instrument of repression of bourgeois society and if we should commit to break its moulds – and thus, not love. On the other hand, I was in love and in a relationship. Challenging and confusing were those times.
In the last few years, my work on human emotions has helped me to build a different perspective.
We humans are social beings from the onset. We could not survive without the social world.
On the other extreme, the so called feral children (the few known cases of children that have grown up without the support of a human community, in the forest, for example), do not even develop basic cognitive and social capabilities due to the lack of support from other human beings.
Humans have developed feelings that are only ‘in embryo’ in animals. Our emotions are always socially built, and as part of this process, they simultaneously become physically built (‘wired’) in the brain. These emotions could legitimately be called higher emotions.
The higher emotions are socially constructed, which means that they emerge and develop when we do things together, as the interdependent beings that we are.
These emotions are a ‘work in progress’, as they change overtime (through history) and they differ among cultures. Also, emotions are not separated from reason; on the contrary, brain and heart work together. So the ways in which we think and feel are informed by the culture in which we live.
The thing is that love could be in the spotlight or it could be greed and selfishness. Individualistic cultures lead to the latter.
Living in a love relationship with a partner (but also with other family members or with friends), involves building intimacy without destroying the need of continuing the development of our own self-determination.
It also involves facing both everyday challenges and the big falls of life with care and understanding; acknowledging mistakes, accepting that others also make mistakes and moving on, walking together.
‘Love chooses us’ is commonly said, but we also need to choose love.
This means to step into the emptiness and accept its call; and not just let it pass and eventually vanish and become a deep sigh in our memory, in the place of what could have been, and never was. Interestingly, even unrequited love makes clear to the person who feels it, that they are alive. I am not suggesting that there is no real danger in love.
Love can be abused by someone that does not love. But loving always involves taking risks. The risk of opening our hearts (and our brains to the idea of loving).
The development of love does not only come from ‘the inside’. ‘Authentic’ love is the result and process of a dialogue, of doing together.
Last Friday morning, the coffee shop lady reminded everybody on the train (through the speakers) to get chocolates and flowers for their loved ones (regardless of their gender) during the weekend.
Her unusual announcement caused laughter and good humour in the passengers. Maybe she was planning to show her love to someone; maybe she was hoping to receive a demonstration of love last weekend.
Either way, she showed that she believe that there is something valuable about love and loving.
Maybe love is a basic glue with which we can construct a ‘we’. Could love be also involved in the construction of a ‘bigger we’?
Personally, I feel really lucky with so much love in my life.
Que viva el amor!
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