Welcome to my blog!
\nHere we talk about all things emotions, the overly impressive hold they have on us, and anything else that\u2019s on your mind. Grab a seat and a glass of wine and let\u2019s chat!! \ud83d\ude0a *EXPLETIVES FREQUENT AND WELCOME*<\/p>\n
\tGood evening readers!!!<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m going to be honest\u2026 I have no idea what I\u2019m doing. Some of my friends in the past have told me that I should try something like this, but to be honest, it\u2019s hard to find a niche that doesn\u2019t already exist. So, here I am, trying to forge my own way into the world of the unknown (in other words, I am flying blind lol). <\/p>\n
As such, I\u2019ve been trying to think for the past few days about what a blog from me could look like. I struggled a bit with trying to figure out what a good format could look like, so I\u2019m playing around with some different way to go about this. For the first go around, let\u2019s try to look at this like you\u2019re reading a journal of mine. Only problem is, I\u2019m writing to an audience. Should I tone down the brashness of my unfiltered thoughts? Probably. Will I? F*ck no lol.<\/p>\n
So, let\u2019s give this a shot. You\u2019ll probably need liquor. No pun intended. My jokes are terrible.<\/p>\n
Finally, September\u2019s coming to a close. I don\u2019t know about you, but that spells good news for me; I\u2019ve been ready for this fall since the end of last fall. My first items on the to-do list? Light a candle that smells like cinnamon, make my mom\u2019s chili recipe, and obsessively analyze and dissect the terrible things that have happened to me in a toxic-ass relationship over the past year-and-a-half that I\u2019ve finally had the courage to get the hell out of.<\/p>\n
Sound like anyone else?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s cut to the chase. Love sucks.<\/p>\n
Love SUCKS.<\/p>\n
It hurts, it makes you angry, and it makes you jealous. It\u2019s this crazy whirlwind of combined emotions that honestly drive you crazy, and I\u2019m SO sick of it. And what\u2019s worse, we\u2019re human; there is zero way on God\u2019s green earth that we\u2019re able to escape our emotions (even though we might think we can through bottles of ros\u00e9 or Tinder binges or what have you).<\/p>\n
Our fate\u2019s been sealed: love is inevitable. Doesn\u2019t that suck?!<\/p>\n
Lucky for us, humans seem to be pretty resourceful. Strategies pop up all over the place trying to make love more bearable, or easier to navigate, or easier to feel in general. Most of the time, though, our resources around love only tend up making us want to beat ourselves over the head. You\u2019ll find sh*t like this in all those celebrity magazines or self-proclaimed \u201cguru\u201d books that really only care about the bag. Yes, searching for the answers seems about as useless as a flashlight on a sunny day. On a rare occasion, though, we might find a strategy or a piece of advice we like. In fact, I\u2019ve only found one that\u2019s actually made me want to (at least consider) start believing in love again. And no, it doesn\u2019t come from a book that looks like an Andy Warhol panting barfed all over it and slapped an attractive celebrity model on the cover saying, \u201cYou can, too!\u201d<\/p>\n
Seriously, grab a drink; I\u2019m about to blow your mind.<\/p>\n
Philosophy. Philosophy has an answer for us. Please don\u2019t click out lol. Seriously, don\u2019t worry; I\u2019m not talking about lengthy arguments from philosophers that couldn\u2019t begin to comprehend what it\u2019s like living in the 2022 love scene. The guy I\u2019m talking about is the real deal.<\/p>\n
Robert Solomon wrote a handy little book called True to Our Feelings. In it, he dissects the concept of emotions so thoroughly that I couldn\u2019t stop reading. I devoured the book in just a few days, but the one chapter I kept returning to was his take on love.<\/p>\n
See, Solomon didn\u2019t think love sucked. In fact, he thought it (wait for it)\u2026 beautiful. And enduring. <\/p>\n
The f*ck?!?!?!<\/p>\n
Curious, I read on. According to Solomon, it seems that love has a lot of power. Obviously. I mean, when\u2019s the last time you thought love was no big deal? It\u2019s been \u201chypercognized,\u201d in his words: love has so much power because we\u2019re constantly talking about it. Granted, we talk about love all the time. This blog is about love, for crying out loud. We\u2019ve beaten all the perceived bits of love into the ground in an effort to define, describe, and discover what love truly is. What is it? Don\u2019t ask my ex; he seemed to think love was being on Tinder at 3 am while I was asleep.<\/p>\n
At first glance, love appears to be subjective. I mean, \u201cbeauty is in the eye of the beholder,\u201d right? People fall in love with different people all the time for different reasons. Solomon sees this idea, but he raises us one. Acknowledging the subjectivity of love actually allows us to get to the root of the objectivity of it. In order to support this claim, Solomon starts at the beginning of the love chain: sexual attraction. Using it as a piece of evidence, he talks about how there are certain aspects of people that seem to be universally attractive. In fact, he says it\u2019s \u201cbiological.\u201d As such, could it really be as subjective as we might think?<\/p>\n
Love is an emotion. It clearly has some sort of structure to it that goes beyond the mystical sh*t we read about in those self-help books. Solomon goes on to tie the previous notion of sexual attraction in with three anecdotes from a guy we all colloquially know: Plato. Please don\u2019t groan lol. Seriously, the stories in Plato\u2019s Symposium do a pretty good job of summing up some of the hardships (and some of that beauty that Solomon references) that love so graciously bestows upon us.<\/p>\n
Essentially, in Plato\u2019s stories, a bunch of guys are sitting around making speeches, and they\u2019re all trying to exemplify different parts of love. Essentially, they\u2019re doing what I\u2019m doing right now with y\u2019all. We\u2019re all trying to make sense of the most elusive emotion in the entire universe. Three characters, though, highlight the pieces of love that I find most intriguing (as well as Solomon). The first guy talks about soulmates. I don\u2019t know what y\u2019all believe about soulmates, but Aristophanes certainly argues for them. Essentially, he tells a story about how humans used to have two heads and four legs, and that they were cut apart by Zeus because of how arrogant they were\u2026 hmm. Regardless, they were made to wander the earth for eternity as they searched for their \u201cother half\u2026\u201d hmmm again.<\/p>\n
The second guy (Socrates) talks about how people need to see past the \u201clove\u201d of the outside (could this be the sexual attraction from before? Perhaps. I\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m trying to make just as much sense of this as you are) while looking into the person at the true \u201cBeauty\u201d of their inside. If that was done, the lover would see what is called \u201cdivine love,\u201d or \u201cPlatonic love.\u201d We\u2019ve heard that before. Platonic love, though? Don\u2019t we want the person that we\u2019re gonna be with forever and ever to NOT just feel a sort of Platonic love for us? Sounds sucky to me.<\/p>\n
Speaking of sucking, the last guy of the speeches Solomon highlights basically gets really drunk and starts ratting on love, talking about how cruel, trapping, and NOT virtuous love is. I mean, look. Case and point. Right?<\/p>\n
Well, Solomon flipped that sh*t on its side and said something at the end of the chapter that stuck with me. He starts his argument with the assertion that love is something that almost strictly has to do with the self. Every piece of any of the parts of love we\u2019ve discussed has something to do with each individual\u2019s internal person. We all go through phases of love, and each one has something different to teach us. For example, love will feel a lot different to the college kid than it will to a 70-year-old couple who just celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. As such, perhaps it is subjective in that way. However, all those pieces of love still tend to have some sort of internal structure that isn\u2019t as subjective. We all classify those things as love, even if they feel different. In short, our experience might be different, but the internal workings of the emotion have very similar components that can\u2019t be logick-ed away. Yes, I just made up that word, and yes, it is my blog, so I have the ability to do that.<\/p>\n
But does love suck?<\/p>\n
Solomon doesn\u2019t think so. What\u2019s even funnier is that he STILL doesn\u2019t think so, even after reading and explaining the significance of that one guy\u2019s story where he sh*t on love. I don\u2019t know. But basically, here\u2019s Solomon\u2019s take. Love makes us whole. In an interpretation of the soulmates anecdote from earlier, he explains that love is the emotion that makes us find our own selves through another self. Basically, two identities are searching the globe for the one who will hold a mirror to ourselves, making us see the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of us. \u201cAnd when all goes well, the resulting emotion is something beautiful and enduring.\u201d We look for the beautiful and enduring, and we endure the not-so-beautiful in hopes of finding that \u201cone.\u201d <\/p>\n
So, it seems that love is inevitable, and it\u2019s not all positive (obviously, it sucks). But when the stars align and the conditions are right, by golly, it seems that love can be quite the passion to live for.<\/p>\n
With that, I think I\u2019ll end here. I don\u2019t always want to live for love, but hey, maybe it doesn\u2019t suck as badly as I thought. And maybe, it doesn\u2019t have to suck as badly for you, either. The perspective of love as a \u201cgrand passion\u201d makes me think about the extent of love\u2019s suckiness, and I think it\u2019s possible to look at love as more of a something to live for. We take the suck with the passion, and we\u2019ll figure out the rest. Until then, love still sucks.<\/p>\n
Just maybe not as badly as it did before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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