Loving Healthy

The denotation of loving is as follows:

“A profoundly tender, passionate affection
A feeling of warm personal attachment
Sexual desire or its gratification
A beloved person
A strong predilection or liking for something
Feeling deep affection or passion”

When I discuss this topic with others, I conclude that there are as many connotations as there are people…go figure! In most cases they connote differently at different times. It appears that no one, that I know of, is able to define loving in-depth. From, it’s a wonderful feeling about someone to liking someone allot.

Loving appears to be on the decline. With all the new technologies available, we have become very relationship…lazy. It appears that our heads are getting bigger and our hearts are getting smaller. Loving is not always popular with some people. The risks associated with loving can be too demanding and compromising. We view the price of ‘weighing the trade’ as being too steep and succumb to less riskier forms of loving and being loved. Pets come to mind as an example. They afford us the affection we desire to not feel alone or lonely at a ‘price’ of food and walks. Very little risk involved with a pet. Some people divert their need for loving or being loved to other activities. Numbing ourselves from feeling the lack of love and loving with sedatives, street drugs and or alcohol, food, shopping, work, hobbies, etc. They keep us avoiding the need for loving. From dolls to pen pals to whatever keeps us from delving into a loving relationship, we become more desensitized as we evolve as a species. It is as if we go out of our way to rationalize not becoming emotionally involved. We look for differences rather than similarities…way beyond our healthy boundaries to avoid risking our affection. We do this perhaps because we do not know how to love…healthy. It would only make sense that if we do not know how to love ourselves, how would we ever be able to love someone else. And, we find ourselves selling out our values and principles for some perceived benefit which in the end result may not be in our healthy best interest. And, then we wonder why the cycle of broken relationships…continues…duh?

Sometimes our chosen cultures and sub-cultures become overpowering and we find ourselves succumbing to pressures that test our honouring of our nature. We choose this option(s) because we do not want to do the work…as in… we are lazy. We want others to make us feel loved and loving. In biology, that type of relationship is called parasitic. We take but we do not give and rather cause harm to the host. The less harmful and also less beneficial type is called saprophytic. That is when we take but do not cause harm to the host. Ideally, the relationship type which is the most beneficially and completes our existence is called symbiotic. It benefits both parties concerned and contributes to their health and welfare. This type of relationship requires more effort and should have a higher priority in our lives…but does it?

Given all the attention that Valentines Day has garnered, the word love and loving is bantered about theoretically but has little impact on our daily activities and hence our inability to love…on a continuum. We and hence our Corporate creations have created one day a year for loving. So, we go out of our way to show affection actively 1/365 of every year. Where does loving rate on our priority list…hmmm? There was an article on pheromones that crossed my screen. Apparently through smell, we are able to become aroused and attracted too, others. This phenomenon was studied in insects first and now we can relate to those findings as humans. What if loving is simply a question of chemical interactions that masquerade as emotions within us through misinterpretations and ignorance…hmmm? And, if the right chemical formula is created, we feel…loving. Sounds rather cold and callous…ya think? But, given that most of our living functions are physiologically and biologically based, why not loving, inclusive of romance, affection and passion…hmmm?

How many of us can separate love from sex and further, should we? How many of us can feel love without sex? How many of us can have sex without feeling love? I can see a gender debate go on… infinitum, on the last statement alone. How many of us know the difference…hmmm? And, how many of us care whether love is inclusive of sex, or not? Given how many of us come from a culture that teaches very little about love and loving, how many of us can identify with it and say that we have experienced loving and being loved?

Can we love intellectually? We all would say love is an emotional exercise, would we not…albeit a relative connotation? Most of us would be able to identify with a spiritual connection for loving…on some level. How many of us can only feel… intellectually? No, that is not a contradiction! Some of us do not know the difference and like the loss of other faculties, we may not even miss knowing the difference. The more we are subjected to the values and principles, or lack thereof, the more we go into our…heads. We feel much safer there and that is where everything makes supposed sense. Whereas, true feelings cannot always be rationalized and justified in our hearts. They are there to experience as a life force and they are there to exalt in life. The risks are much greater if we do not perceive them in a healthy context, but that is the dichotomy, is it not?

Imagine taking LOVING 101 in our school system. Would that not be great? How many times have we used words LOVE or LOVING in our lifetimes? How many times did we intend on using LUV or LUVING instead because it is less threatening and implies…less? The ‘bottom line’ is that WE KNOW VERY LITTLE ABOUT LOVING OR BEING LOVED? And, given that “LOVE MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND” we do not seem to place a high priority on the subject…and so it is.