ARIS P. AÑONUEVO, SSS
SEXUALITY AND INTEGRATION
LOVE IS A MANY
SPLENDORED THING
A Reflection on the chapter Metaphysical Analysis of
Love
From the
book Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla
“Love is a many splendored
thing, it’s the April rose that grows only in the spring….” So goes a song
about love. It is a classic and it still rings true even after many generations
from the time it was first heard. Love has many faces; it is a complex reality
which has been the subject of great thinkers and writers of times past yet so
simple and pure that it can make a poet out of an illiterate man. Love is a
universal experience. Without love, according to a book entitled “The Name of
the Rose,” life would be peaceful and tranquil, yet so dull. Love keeps us
going, it makes the world go round!
When
was the last time I fell in love anyway? My mind wandered as I was browsing
through the given material. The feeling became alive once more as if it were
only yesterday when I professed my love to a girl I had my eye on way back in
college. I could only smile at the memories of sleepless night thinking about
her, the weekends which seemed to drag so slow, the thrill of looking into her
brown eyes, the warmth of her touch and the sweetness of her smile. And then,
the agony of defeat when she chose someone else. Perhaps I was very young then,
unable to handle the strange feelings flooding into my consciousness. I admit I
became a sentimental fool, I was all emotions. It was all about admiring the
qualities and attributes that she possessed that are not in me. She seemed to
fill that which is missing in me. When she turned me down I vowed never to
invest too much emotion on love anymore. I’d be more detached, and practical.
This resolution led me to read articles about body language, subtle seduction
techniques, how to flirt. In short, I wanted to be more rational about love,
never putting a woman on a pedestal, else, she would just run further away.
There were times when I asked myself whether I still have the capacity to love
genuinely.
What
is love? This has always been my question and this is also a question I am
often asked about. My experiences of rejection early in life made me feel love
as something to be scared about. I was contented of loving from a distance
since it shields me from pain. When I am in the presence of my friends I am an
outstanding wit but in her presence I am reduced to some incomprehensible
grunts. Ah, a typical ‘torpe’ that I was. Teen agers of today are luckier with
the technologies available. Back then, love letters got torn to shreds even
before the message has been read. That was love for me, choosing to admire in
silence, because in my silence there is no rejection.
As
I grew a little bit older, I encountered a broader definition of love. It went
this way: “Love is a series of good intentions put into action by a lover to
his/her beloved without counting the cost.” It is not enough, I was told, to
love at a distance, it must be expressed in words, manifested in deeds, (no wonder
I have been plagued by pimple back then, it was a case of unspoken love),
without asking nor demanding something in return. I stood by this definition
for years now even if I feel something one-sided about it. It seems to lean
towards martyrdom, to
love and get hurt because it is better than not
loving at all. It is all self giving. What about the giver? Must he/she always give himself/herself in
love because of the commitment to do so? It seemed to me that such a definition
is devoid of the “kilig factor.”
Having
loved and lost before, I too, took an active part in this unending search for
the meaning of what love is. Karol Wojtyla’s work came just at a right time. By
far it is the most comprehensive work that I encountered in this subject. It
opened up new dimensions and broadened my views. I found it even surprising
that love is metaphysical. No wonder it is so hard to define it using simple
categories. There points were he was able to put into words some thoughts that
are struggling within me for utterance. And still others remind me of what
others writers wrote in simpler language. Love, I realized, is not static, nor
is it love at all to see everything from a distance. Love is that which transforms
and improves the soul (P. Coelho). Love
is dynamic, a process which follows a pattern, it contains essential elements
to be called such. When do love begin? Comradeship can be a seedbed for love
since it is a ground where men and women could get in contact with each other
thereby becoming aware of each other’s presence. It can yield situations where
physical attraction are triggered and become a starting point of something that
is deep. If it is shallow and based only on the outside, it can be easily
turned of in the blink of an eye. When we are attracted, we say, we fall to a
person. And when it waxed, we fall out of it. But when our attraction turns and
grows into a desire, a longing for a person, we say that we have fallen in
love. Desire can have selfish connotations but Wojtyla points out the desire
that is connected to our need for companionship, for someone to fill the gap
between our fingers. Bringing it further, I remember Nancy Van Pelt who said
something like, “We don’t fall in love, we climb into it.” Climbing into love
is another interesting dimension. When one gets over the emotions and great
desire to be happy with another person, when being in love has faded, so to
say, only love remains. This happens when a person desire also for what is good
for the other. This is goodwill, a conscious act, a series of good intentions
put into action. We seem to have gone back to my old definition. But let me
assure you it will no longer lead to what I called martyrdom of sort. For Karol
Wojtyla spoke of reciprocity because loving is not a one-way street, it is
indeed a dynamic process and therefore it has to be reciprocated in order to be
complete. “Unequited love is condemned first to stagnation, then to gradual
extinction.” It is not something that exist in both persons involved but it
exist between those persons. Two becomes one. Now there is an answer to the
lovers’ cry, “Why is there ‘you’ and ‘me’ but there can never be ‘us’?” Love is
not looking at one another but looking at one direction. This mutual
relationship between two persons is called love. Mutual relationship, give and
take, so to speak is what describes friendship. This reminds me of Princess
Diana’s advice to his son William, “Marry your best friend.” No wonder priests
would always advice newlywed couples to treat their spouse as their best friend
for life.
To God be the glory.
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