Love, New Conception

It seems my conception of love just keeps changing and changing. Before my second semester of college I had some idea of what love was but I never really thought about it. I just thought you'd know it when you felt it. I never thought about trying to understand it and just left it as this ideal, this just unexplainable feeling that can't truly be figured out or understood. Then in my second semester of college I had a philosophy teacher by the name of Mr. Sanders. I only had him for intro to philosophy but his insight into certain subjects was rather captivating. There are many subjects now that in the way I think are influenced by his thought, not that I blindly accepted what he said but I tried to find flaws in his reason and accepted the ideas based on his reasons. Now to get back on the subject at hand he had given his explanation of what love was and I thought it was pretty good and accepted it on a temporary basis because I still needed to work through his reasons and the idea behind his conception of love. His idea was that love isn't about yourself. Love is not selfish, it is when you are concerned about the other person to whom you love above yourself. You don't want them to be sad because its them you care about, you make them happy not to make you happy but because knowing they are happy is all that concerns you. I can't fully explain it because I'm still adjusting to the idea. Its a rather shocking concept but I think it is good. The way I've simplified it for myself was that you are concerned about the other person more then yourself. Now when I brought this concept up to one of my friends who does have his own insight in the world that is rather remarkable, his name is Chris. Chris's concepts and ideas I don't always agree with but he has the ability that most people don't, he can give reasons and rational reasons to explain what he believes and why he believes it. But when I brought up the idea he looked shocked and disagreed with the concept. He said that doesn't work because you can't say that your goal is your reason, you can't want to make someone happy because it'll make them happy. So that makes sense. When it came to the concern portion of this idea of love he said that nobody does anything for someone else there is a drive that when you make someone happy it makes you happy. His argument was that everybody does everything to make them happy or at least content, or something along those lines. I disagreed because I don't think people are selfish all the time, maybe most of the time but not all; but that is for another discussion.

But anyway the true point of this essay is that I think I've poked a hole in the concept of love that my teacher spoke of. The idea came to me when I was showering, I thought of the wife in the Truman Show. She married Truman and pretended to be his wife to make him happy and her concern was him; her reasons were for her “job” but she still fills the concept that your concern is of the other person. This is a little far out but it is a thought experiment which usually are a little outrageous in their conceptions. Thinking of this there could be other reasons that make someone legitimately care for the concerns and happiness of another person more then themselves but they probably do not enjoy it and regret it, like the wife in the Truman Show, does that still qualify as love. Yes I think it does, at least in the concept that my teacher gave because the reasons were not clearly stated as why you have concern of the other person over yourself.

This led me to rethink love, I am not a fan of any of the “all” ideas, people are selfish all the time, there is an all knowing, all loving, and all wise being; I don't like “all” concepts and yet I let one slip by, your are always concerned about the other person above yourself. So I think now the concept of love has at least two concepts; you are concerned about the other person above yourself and you are with that person because they make you feel better, happier or content. Neither one over powers the other they are both necessary. This rules out the wife in the Truman Show because she might not have been happy or felt better while being with Truman. So that is what I believe are two parts of the concept of love, there may be more to it but for now those are the ones I understand.