Narcissistic nature of Ideal Love

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Love, something that bewilders many. The task of explaining this mysterious feeling has often been left aside for poets, play-writers, or movie-makers to deal with. Nonetheless, it has managed to stretch far enough to occupy a place not only in the philosopher’s mind, but also in the scientist’s lab.

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare writes…

Love is a smoke rais’d with the fume of sighs;
Being purg’d, a fire sparkling in a lover’s eyes;
Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears:
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.

Love is compared with smoke. If one is ever in love, one is bound to sigh for happiness — sighs that are fueled by utter contentment and pure joy; or for grief — sighs fueled by a broken heart. Love is there, the smoke is inevitable — whether it works or not is the matter of the nature of those sighs. How beautiful is that?

Some argue that explaining love or classifying it takes away its lure and magic. John Lee surely did not shy away from doing exactly that. Colors and Love? It makes Love sound like just another thing you can touch or see. Lee uses the analogy of the color wheel. He proposed three primary styles (colors) of love: eros, ludos, and storge, and three secondary styles of love which correspond, in theory, to the combinations of primary colors: mania, pragma, and agape. For example, you could possess Eros — Love for an ideal person, Ludos — Love as a game, or Mania — loving someone obsessively, a combination of Eros and Ludos.

Science and Art alike attempted to know what love is, how one can talk of love, and what one can do with love.

But seriously, let’s face it. Chances are, you’re not going to read The Colors of Love (1973), watch The Notebook (2004) or listen to Darren Hayes’ Insatiable (2002) to verify whether what you feel is really truly platonic love. Quite to the contrary, actually, you would rather deceive yourself into believing that your emotions are beyond description — things that are not only too awful for words, but also beyond normal human realization and are solely confined to you and your lover. Outlandishly special.

Until that day comes, you are bound to the wonder of your own mind and the limits of your unaided imagination, to attempt to think, feel, or predict the nature of love. That is, of course, if you’re curious about it. If not, then you are welcome to stop reading now.

Belonging to those driven by curiosity — and hoping that it is the right and natural kind of curiosity — I, like many other poets, philosophers, and scientists, have my theory of love. Simply put…

I love you, because

I see myself in you,

You reflect me,

and I love me.

Before you go ahead and complain about how self-centered my claim sounds, please allow me to state the following:

This is an attempt to explain the loveness of love — a possible essential component of what we come to call true love — ideal love. Needless to say, people fall in love for different reasons: some for admiration, some for sympathy, and yet others as a result of an illness. I do not attempt to explain any of that — I attempt to, strictly speaking, propose the conceptual, and rather unconscious, underpinnings of true love. It is likely that the premises I mentioned above apply to many, but the selfishness of the notion it revolves around, that is, I love me, triggers anxiety and emotional negativity, and is therefore repressed (yes, talking from a Freudian point of view). Instead, love is commonly thought of, put vaguely but simply, as an admiration of another person for his or her qualities independent of oneself’s.

It is not how I see it.

I’m sure many would agree to the common “You attract what you are,” the mere “I recognize myself in you,” and the hit song “It’s like you’re my mirror, my mirror’s staring back at me.” An extension to the above notion, and crucial to my theory of love, is bold narcissism, hence the name Narcissistic Theory of Love, should it become recognized and integrated to the body of knowledge.

The idea resonates with other cocky claims, and is therefore frowned upon and brutally rejected by many, but I could care less for opinions. If you were not able as of yet to think it through and sense some truth in it, I would like to invite you to examine your very own words, thoughts, gestures, and emotions, through which you are likely to confess that the Narcissistic Theory of Love can explain the phenomenon of true love, and is therefore not merely just another fancy label.

First. Think mirror. What do you do with a mirror? I’m guessing you check yourself out. Your beautiful physical features, tiny little flaws here and there. Mirrors don’t lie. They reflect exactly what you look like. The question is, why are we interested in this reflection? Quite simply, we are striving to attain an ideal image. An image that is likely to make us feel good, an image that we believe will truly reflect our own ideal. That is why we stare and modify the little details.

One day, you will stand in front of your mirror, and for the first time, there will be nothing to change. You would lean back and forth, but there is no need for make up, no need for jewelry, no need for a fancy shirt, no need for anything. You would have, then, perfected your own ideal image.

Okay, back to Love. You. Another person. In love. What does that mean? A mirror talking back at you, letting you know that maybe you are right: you have perfected your own ideal, and that your own ideal is not only accepted by someone else, but also, more importantly is manifested in someone else. Unlike a mirror, which reflects physical attractiveness, that “someone else” is reflecting something beyond our physique… that someone else is reflecting our minds, our thoughts, our likes, our dislikes, our morals, our flaws, our everything.

You and that person don’t only have so much in common, you alsoadmire what you have in common. You are not both funny, you admire a sense of humor. You are not both smart, you admire intelligence. And that is why you have cultivated those qualities in yourself, the other person did so too.

If you are dishonest and untrustworthy, chances are, you are also likely to find “someone else” who is just like you, who reflects you. But you are only likely to fall in love with them if you happen to admire those qualities. To be brutally honest, only a brain-washed, insane person would fall in love like that.

Your ideal self — what you have always admired and longed for — you have attained. Love is an extension of that attainment. Love is having someone else who shares your ideals, who shares your love for those ideals, who shares your love for what you have attained, who shares your love for yourself.

Now what does all this have to do with a pinch of narcissism? Narcissism, in my mind, is a noble quality when it is attained in the right kind of way — which prompts me to think that we should attempt to develop is definition. Loving oneself for having perfected one’s ideals is a noble form of narcissism — narcissism that is justified. You fall in love with yourself before falling in love with anyone else. Having attained your idea self, you’ll find yourself truly loving what you are. You would come to the realization that you have found the pure, ideal essence of what you are, not the polluted, fragile, broken thing you used to be. Your ideal self is the self worthy of someone else’s precious love.

I believe Narcissism is there, but we don’t admit it, mostly due to the meaning attached to the word.

So yeah…

I don’t love you because you reflect me, I love you because you reflect the ideals that I have achieved and the ideals I am hoping to achieve.

Love is needed to keep up with your ideal self (the ME part of ‘I love me’ in the fourth premise). Love is needed to remind you of the good person you are. You might lose yourself sometimes, but you’ll always have someone by your side who could put you back on track again, whom you could equally help get back on track again.

The task is, then, to cultivate your ideal self first, and then find it.

 

Love isn’t just about a reflection. Love is about admiring the reflection, love is about loving the reflection, love is aboutsustaining and transcending the reflection…

So that every time you look in the mirror, you would say, without much contemplation or second thoughts, “we are beautiful.”

Little Things

Life, at times, chokes one with its wonders, particularly gigantic wonders – tallest tower, highest summit, smartest phone, etc. There is a lot to take in and appreciate that we often lose the pleasure we once derived from a stranger’s smile or the lost dime we noticed by the traffic light as we waited patiently to cross the street. Inattentional blindness – it is not our choice anymore – to turn our eyes away from little things that have once given us pure joy – it is rather that our eyes, even when confronted by the most innocent and noteworthy of gestures and actions, cannot perceive them.

I set out to try to be fully attentive to little things around me: from words, pictures and things that required a 180 degree head turn or two feet bend-down, to situations that involved awkwardly taking photos of seemingly trivial objects in public. It was rather interesting, beautifully significant, and effortlessly thought-provoking all of that which managed to present itself to my consciousness.

1. Honest, beautiful, but repetitive remarks:

  • Mom & Dad: “Girls, you get prettier by the day. And we’re not saying that just because you’re our children”. Me: “Mom, Dad – all parents say that to their children, and by that I mean: all parents say “we’re not saying you’re pretty just because you’re our children.”” But thank you. Just another laugh we’re to remember years down the road.

2. Societal consolations:

  • When you’re ambitious, people say “dream big, you can do whatever you want in this life.” But when your dreams don’t come true and your hopes come crashing down, people say “well, you know, dreams die.”
  • Life is ups and downs, when you’re up, you’re a sinless saint, when you’re down “everybody makes mistakes.” Maybe being straightforward or avoiding such things as white lies is what we hope for, but what we really need is consolation, even when it conveys the silliest and most contradictory of remarks.

3. At the mall:

  • Looking at the mall map, trying to find direction to the bookstore, then someone from behind rudely exclaims “excuse me!” and pushes herself forwards to read the map – in my mind, “dude, can’t you freakin’ see that I’m using the damn thing?!” But no. I apologize politely and walk away, having barely satisfied my need of finding the store.
  • You make your way out to the parking lot and see a huge box for book-donations, and you think “there’s still some good left in this world”.

4. At the counter:

  • You’re 50 cents short of total payment in a supermarket, the cashier asks you to give up one of your groceries. You say goodbye to your favorite chocolate bar and move on in life. Yet, when the cashier owes you some coins and is desperately looking for change in the counter to give it to you, it makes you feel good to whole-heartedly say “it’s ok, keep the change”.
  • Naïve – yet when your change contains the brightest, newly-made coin that is mirror-like in clarity, you put it on the shelf and decide to never spend it.

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  • Impatiently waiting to buy your stuff, and instead of looking at your phone pretending to be busy, you decided to notice the few toys and souvenirs  around. It reads “Microwaveable Hottie” and you think to yourself “Daf*q?”. But then you realize that, in reality, “Hot Hugs” are much needed, because the world has gone cold, and stuffed animals whose tummy can be microwaved are more humane than humans themselves.

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Maybe waiting at the payment counter gives you the chance to think about the meaning of life.

  • You’re out to buy a birthday present for a loved one when an expensive kitchen-tools’ shop catches your eyes. You enter to see the cute little baking utensils, and you look upwards to see the most magnificent and creatively-made chandelier you have ever seen, only to truly wonder “who thought of designing that?”

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I don’t know about you, but thinking back to the events and people I encountered, and randomly checking the photos I took on my phone, instagraming them to give them that extra glow to shape a pleasant memory, is pleasurable. Writing this post is also pleasurable – a good exercise and an effort to understand the workings of my mind and the workings of the world. Even my typing in long, fragmented sentences involves the intention of making you think “she’s complicated.”

The headlines in the news, the fancy cars, and skyscrapers never cease to amaze me, but they have equally mastered the art of distracting me from the here and now – from the little things that truly give meaning to life, from the little observations that provoke thinking about the complexity of our world, our society, our failures, our successes, and our short-comings.

Boredom is an illusion – you cannot be bored. There are just so many things around waiting to be noticed and waiting to impact you in some way. Just over seventeen years on Earth, and it is only now that I made such realizations. Some are over 70, and still fail to integrate meaning into life.

It’s simple: look around, and pay attention.

Unconditional love is limited

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Intended paradox in the title.

Ignorant of whether it is my realism or my new-found tendency to be theoretically pessimistic, but I believe unconditional love is either destructive or non-existent in the context of romantic relationships.

According to Wikipedia, the resource all academics urge us to avoid, unconditional love is known as affection without any limitations; it is that kind of love which has no bounds and is unchanging. It is important to distinguish between conditional and unconditional love. In conditional love, you are constantly fighting to earn someone’s love; in unconditional love, love is given freely – free of rules and regulations, terms and conditions.

Unconditional love means accepting the person as they are, and not wishing them to be anything else but that. It is surrealistic. It is perfection. The attainment of the highest forms of love. Platonic. The problem is that it does not stand the test of imagination. It is beyond the capacity of our minds.

I’m aware that many readers might disagree with me. I hate to break it to you, but I think unconditional love can only manifest itself in more or less two forms: maternal love and self-love – romantic love excluded.

A mother’s love for her child is arguably unconditional and eternal. The mother demands nothing from her child; a mother’s unconditional love pours for the mere fact that the child exists. There is no give and take relationship. In the first few years of life, in particular, only the mother can give, and she asks for nothing in return. Maternal love is selfless; a mother never asks what is in it for her, but what is in it for her child. This might also apply to parental love in general, but maternal love in particular has made a stronger case over the course of history.

Self-love is another form of pure love. It does not mean overlooking one’s flaws and short-comings, or loving oneself despite committing the ugliest of actions. It is about knowing that you owe yourself goodness. It is about knowing that eventually, it is only you who will be standing by your side. It is about knowing that your creation has a purpose and that you are ought to honor that purpose. Loving oneself is not about being arrogant or self-centered. It is about caring for oneself, taking responsibility for oneself, respecting oneself, and knowing oneself.

Think again about your capacity to love someone “romantically” unconditionally. That person standing right in front of you has imperfections. Accepting and dealing with someone else’s short-comings is one thing, but not wishing for those imperfections to just disappear is a mastered form of self-denial. Here’s why.

I think loving someone is about bringing out the best in them. Loving someone is about being a positive influence on them. It is about making them a better person. If you are being the provider of unconditional love, by definition, you must have mastered the skill of blinding yourself from every little gesture you do not like, from every act of carelessness the other person might display, and from any form of pain you might get. Absolutely no conditions. The very idea of not being okay with everything that person did, does, and might do means that you do not love them unconditionally. The very idea of wishing that that person fixes a tiny flaw, or a bad habit, means that you do not love them unconditionally – again, by definition.

In fact, when care appears, unconditional love often vanishes.

Martha Beck

Love in romantic relationships must be an action, not just an emotion. It must be something you are constantly striving to earn, and working hard to sustain. Both partners strive to bring out the best in themselves and complete one another. Unconditional love is a myth. An unlimited supply of anything is appreciated less. Think about money. If money never runs out, you are likely to appreciate it less. You will use it foolishly because there are no consequences or limits. You will respect it less.

The logic behind unconditional love is not only faulty, but also destructive. You are limiting the person you unconditionally love from growing and developing into their best self. Your inaction, i.e. not providing them with guidance and constructive criticism, takes its toll on both yourself and your loved one. Unintentionally, you are actually encouraging that person to stay the same, with all good and bad deeds. You’re undermining their capacity to be good and achieve their goals.

Now, of course, according to wikiHow, everything I said is utter nonsense; you can learn to love unconditionally following 6 easy steps.

But do me a favor and ask yourself, “what if nothing changes?” and “what if things got worse?” – you’re abusing yourself if you think you can still love unconditionally if things got worse, or never got better.

The only constant thing in life is change. Unconditional love in its purest form and divinity cannot exist in this world simply because it defies nature.

I have seen unconditional love. It ain’t pretty. It often goes awry, and some lives burn to smithereens. Don’t aspire to be something you cannot be. Unconditional love is just a fantasy that cannot break down the bounds of reality.

Throughout this post, I have concentrated on the literal, strong definition of the word “unconditional”. I have seen awful too many people use this term carelessly and pretend to be doing something good. Much of the outcomes are devastating and cause mental and physical draining. Loving someone unconditionally is not something to be proud of. We are way beyond using outlandish definitions to treat ourselves into Utopia. People, please stop sugarcoating and do the work. True, genuine love exists. It is just that it follows a different criteria, and without a doubt, one that is different from that of unconditional love.

Keep in mind that this post focused on unconditional love in romantic relationships. Altruistic behavior carries with it a form of unconditional love. But then again, further definitions and divisions are beyond the scope of this article.

For those interested, Should Love Be Unconditional? is an insightful piece. It moderates various concepts of unconditional love, and in some way, further illustrates my attack.

Living in black, white… or shades of grey?

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Funny someone once threw words at me, asking me to act “naturally” and not make a big deal out of living. Two words, dude: define natural.

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I’m still in the process of putting together a worldview and a philosophy of life. I don’t recall when I decided to embark on this journey, but I have come to know that it is an essential stage in the course of development.

For some reason, some people tend to use that squishy thing trapped inside the skull, others tend to put it aside and do some experimenting, and still others switch it on and off as they please. People are oceans apart when it comes to how to live, but they all have one thing in common (I hope), and that is to answer one little, yet fundamental question “Who am I?”.

We have three types of people, broadly speaking.

Well, what is the normal way to go about life’s journey? That’s an easy question. Do what everybody else does! If most people around you use their brain and act rationally, then that’s the norm. If people tend to experiment and try things out to see what works for them, then that’s another norm. And finally, if people tend to use their brain at times, and try things out at other times.. then, you guessed it, that’s another normal way to live.  

So basically, the definition of the normality of a human life, in this context, is the extent to which he or she fit into and adopt environmental or social conventions.

If we take it up a notch, we might inquire about the nature of the human being, or the natural way to live. And that’s when it gets tricky. The so-far-attained truth is that nobody knows! There’s no answer yet. Knowing the nature of the human being is the very motive of “knowledge.” This simple inquiry is what originates humanities and social sciences, and much, if not all, of the problematic philosophical debates. Is the human being a thinking thing? Or a rational animal as Aristotle suggested?

Do we have absolute control over our lives? Do our experiences shape our lives? Or do we shape our experiences?

Are we merely realizing our capacities? Are we blank slates? Or a little bit of both, a part characterized by innate dispositions, and another part in need of experience to be activated at all?

Black, white, or shades of grey?

I think the picture is starting to expose its three dimensions. But as I mentioned earlier, there is no right or wrong answer. And it’s even possible that these are not the only routes to go about living.

It’s really up to you. There’s only the answer you formulate. Consider the following questions:

How do you view yourself now? How do you like to view yourself in the future, looking back? How do you like to think about the nature of the human being? How do you like everybody to behave or think? What is your ideal? Does your definition of the ideal contradict your reality? Can you enact your own definition to what’s left of your life? Or would you passively confirm to the external, cozy norm? Are you likely to think of your actions as experiences? As choices? Or a matter of contingency or self-serving bias: as experiences when they turn to mistakes, and as choices when they turn to success?

How you answer those questions should give you an insight on your current philosophy. You could choose to reflect and change. Perhaps you’ve been too rigid and rational, too passive and inactive, or swayed too heavily by what comes in your way (i.e. easily impressionable, or going with the flow). 

Remember: make a choice, commit to it, and act on it.   

Here’s a snapshot to my own view and ideal:

I’m now certainly neither white nor grey. To elaborate on that, as a child I might not have had the choice to be black, so I did use to be white, and needed to experience many shades of grey up to a certain stage in the course of my development. But I have come to a point where I believe a decision can and is ought to be made.

So yeah, I like it black. I find the idea of a “thinking thing” very attractive and I’d like to think of myself as one. No I’m not a passive recipient of external stimuli, and neither do I need experience to realize what’s right or wrong. It’s all up there. That squishy thing between my ears, inside my skull is what creates this life I’m living and what is responsible for my choices and their consequences. Sophrosyne (reason, self-control, moderation, and self-awareness), to me, characterizes the very essence of a human being.. so why not at least try to fulfill this prophecy during my lifetime?

Again, I wouldn’t know if this is natural or not. But one has got to start somewhere, even if it’s from a mere belief or ideal, and work towards fulfilling it. I guess.

Scott

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People come and go. But some have a mysterious kind of existence that draws you to them, in a way. There is a sense of ease that embodies you as they occupy a physical space somewhere close. They walk by, and suddenly, calmness and serenity make you just want to stop and stare. They make you drop everything you’re doing and just appreciate the peaceful transference of energy and the harmonious vibration of particles in the room. Something about them is inexplicable, no matter how hard you try to reduce it down to physical entities or amplify it to supernatural auras.

I call him Scott. Though our eyes never met, and though all I can glimpse of him is his figure and physical gestures, the thought of him makes me smile. Scott makes me enter to an endless state of meditation I never want to terminate. We frequent the same place. I never felt the desire to talk to him, despite the fact that his status allows for a conversation to start smoothly, with no sense of awkwardness. I was happy admiring from afar.

The closest I’ve ever got to his being was when my shadow stood two feet away from his. But in reality, we were four meters apart. Our backs were facing one another; he was conversing with someone else while I was drinking from a water tank. I could hear what they were talking about, not that I intended to. But his voice was music to an ear often deaf to others’. It was an involuntary selective attention that my brain decided to engage in. His voice was a manifestation of the ideal you’d be fool not to desire to get a grasp of.

All I ever saw were pieces – chunks of his being that my memory constantly fails to put together into a coherent, beautiful soul. I never saw his two eyes in an instant. He would walk before me and I would see the right side of his face. Then the left side as he makes his way back. But never both simultaneously. My imagination would make out of his gait a fantasized scenario of a tango dancer, for it was flawless and in sync with his surroundings. No sound. Almost like a ghost you’d want to walk through.

My story with Scott never started to even end. It is merely a strand of fantasies, striving hopelessly to make sense of his mysterious and charming existence.