9/21/12

Measuring Love

    I wonder if there's any way to know whether or not you really love someone.  Can love be measured?  I mean, we all say we love someone as much as we possibly can, but is it true?  Do we spend more of our love on them as a relationship progresses, or do we simply become capable of loving more?  Perhaps it's something of both.  Having been single all my life, I wouldn't know, but can any of us really answer the question "How much do you love me?" ?  Is it enough simply to love, or must we know how much of another person's heart we have?  Can it be gauged, or is it beyond all human reckoning?  I'm asking a lot of questions here, I know, but I'm honestly curious.  Does a married couple of 50 years love each other more than they did when they had only been married 25 years?  What about ten years?  Five years?  When they were engaged?  When they first began their relationship?  Do they in fact love each other more, or is it simply a different kind of love?  What if, during the first stages of a relationship, you love someone more and more, until you can't possibly love them any more.  Then, once that one person has all of your earthly affection and devotion, what if your love simply begins to mature?  For example, when you were conceived, you were a pair of cells.  Those cells divided and multiplied and divided again, and rearranged themselves and grouped up, and then you looked like a human, and then you were born, and then you grew some more, until you were complete.  All of your bones were as large and as powerful as they were ever going to be, your muscles were fully developed, your brain told your body what to do and it did it.  Then you began another growing process, but this one was invisible.  You began to mature.  You become more and more capable of intelligent thought, of reason and logic, and of proper and decorous behavior.  This mysterious self-education began before you were fully developed physically, but once your brain no longer had to worry about directing this protein to this muscle, and this vitamin to that internal organ, and telling the bones to build themselves up and the muscles to pull this way and that way, once all of that became routine and normal, then you could focus fully on developing your mind, your intelligence, your feelings.  That's how I think it works.  There's a bit of overlap with the two processes, but for the most part it's one first and then the other.  There's my opinion, anyway.  Not that it matters.

2 comments:

  1. Have you read The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis?

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    1. It is on my reading list for this summer. College doesn't leave one much time for pleasure reading.

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