Check Yes or No
I was asked a question today. A simple question to answer, but tough to explain. Now that I think I'm so educated and sophisticated, I have to redefine everything in my answers to philosophical questions, so if I could stop doing that, I'd be set.
The question was "Can you love someone and not know why?"
My immediate answer was "yes". I think we can all think of an example of the opposite, someone knowing that they should love someone else, and not knowing why not. Those examples alone convinced me that the answer must be yes. Love cannot easily be rationalized, so to explain it in it's various contexts, to me, is pointless. Of course all questions about love are theoretical, and those kinds of questions produce more questions. Can you base a long-term relationship/marriage on that kind of love? The English language fails us by only having one word for the various meanings of love. I can be in-love without knowing why, but when I act on that and marry my beloved, then I must love her as I have vowed to love her. Love is at once an emotion and an action, and yet they are both distinct entities. Every wedding vow has a promise to love. Can you promise an emotion? In-love is an emotion. Act-love is what is promised. Marriages sometimes end when one party no longer feels in-love. That shouldn't mean however, that they are no longer capable of acting out their vow. The vow promises an action, not an emotion. It was suggested that my vision of love was cynical, or at least disappointingly unromantic, but that's how I feel.
I think that focusing on our personal emotions is a result of our "me generation". Maintaining a vow, even if only for the reason of maintaining a vow, regardless of one's personal emotions, definitely strengthens the greater societal good (which, I admit, shouldn't always be the goal). To quote a great country song, "I think this is how love goes, check yes or no."

   [ posted by William @ 10:51 PM ]