Love etc…
My young Friend Rasha. was talking to me about her yet to show up charming prince, she spent her adolescence reading these passionate love stories and now they are so ingrained in her brain…she started feeling she is Cinderella, and truly believes her destiny will be like her, this is not trivial at all as most of the girls I have known were the same including myself!
…. I spent at least half of my life believing that there is one person for each one of us. I blame this idea that was planted in my head at an early age on a conversation I had at a very early age with a friend that I looked up to at that point of my life. This friend said once in a moment of lucidity that we only have one true friend and we only have one true love. Since I was gullible and easily impressionable, and the words came out of my mentor’s lips from all people, I lived years and years not only believing intensely in that idea, but fighting for proving it is right! Ironically this friend’s life has been the perfect example of the opposite extreme! His lifestyle is the proof that this nice idea is only a nice idea! He has been going out steadily with at least 3 “fiends” because he hates the term girl friend and these “friends” not only know about each other, but somehow they managed to become best friends! With time my friend stopped believe in marriage, he does not think that one person can satisfy all his needs…. But I won’t get into this today. This is worthy of a post on its own!
Couple of years ago, I was talking to a mathematician friend, and I was arguing passionately that we only have one true love, and this friend went into a calm logical explanation that this is mathematically impossible, as there are 6 billion people on this earth and the probability that we fall in love more than once is simply more than 1!!! And I had no other option but to see the error of my ways!
These three conversations came to my mind today in my trip from Aqaba to Amman where I spent it being amused by May Ziadeh’s confused love stories. May was in love with 3 different men. A German guy, with whom she had a brief thing, but he disappeared from her life at a later stage and she ended up going to Germany few times to find him.
Gibran Khalil Gibran, with whom she corresponded for more than 25 years. The stories say they have never met, although one rumour was that they met once, for one whole night, where they spent it talking على ذمة the person who came up with the rumour. Gibran on the other hand had a very busy love life that was characterized by a series of intense affaires with different partners. At the same time he was corresponding with May, sometimes very emotional and romantic letters, he was seriously dating a woman in Boston, having affaires left right and centre, with several girls and corresponding seriously with another lady!
So since their love story was only platonic it never crystallized into anything concrete, they loved each other without really loving each other. There was no passion, obviously since they never met and if the rumour was true they only spent one night together, that was not passionate enough because it never led to any other nights. There was also no commitment what so ever because of his bohemian lifestyle and her strict feminist views and belief that love must lead to marriage other wise it is not love at all. Beside the fact that they both were in love with other people. And whether in my idealistic phase or in my cynical one, the one thing that remains unchanged is that relationships without passion is not the kind of love I am talking about here.
The third man in her life was Abas Mahmoud il Aqad. A man that was the object of my fantasies since I was very young. His dark skin and good looks, his defiance to the school system that he never finished, yet managed to become Abas Mahmoud il Aqad, one of the most intelligent and intellectual men in our culture, all were elements that made me completely fancy Al Aqad, even if he is not a person in my life, yes the very same kind of feelings girls have for Enrique Iglesias, Orlando Bloom or that cute Egyptian actor il sa2a.. May and Al Aqad had a very flirty relationship, where they dated on weekly basis… he wrote her lots of beautiful poems, and she wrote him lots of naughty letters… however, their love died in the crib, because she called him once and the phone was answered by Sarah, a woman that he fancied!
I guess what I am trying to say here, is that love is something very volatile, it comes and goes, and maybe it is time for girls to move away from this Cinderella notion, because I promise human beings are too weak and curious to fall in love only once.
This was a lovely read for me. I enjoyed it very much. However I disagree with you on the definition of passion. Passion can exist without the physical manifestation. It can be strong and earth shaking while being platonic. I would argue that it is at it’s most strength without physical contact.
As for loving more than once. Again, I think that is possible. Additionally I think you can love more than one person at the same time, each for a different reason.
Then I go back and think to my self how love is really a wasted and fake emotion. I believe it doesn’t exist. It our perception that makes it manifest in this strange chemical imbalance that we feel and causes us to think that we’re truly madly deeply in love with a person.
I view love as a system of control. Created by humans to govern and control our interactions with each other. It separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom since we get to experience and indulge in feelings that animals might not understand.
Love is also a way of accepting a person in someone’s life. If you accept a person, you would go out of your way to make them happy. And allow them into your most sacred of shrines.
My last point (I promise) is that Love as a concept is very different when it comes to males and females. Each has their own view and ideas about it. It all stems from the way society has molded us plagued with myth and fairy tails and corrupted with over expectations that lead to disappointments.
I enjoy thinking of the notion that if you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with. Be sincere and faithful to that person till the end that’s the best part of love
Again, I apologize for over philosophizing and talking too much
I liked your saying if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you are with… it is trully intelligent.
You can philosophize as much as you like, i have always been accused of philosophizing and i have a specail respect for those who do intellectualize
thanks again for your comment
Hello Madas,
I came to your blog by way of Zeyad’s blog. Of the bloggers that he met in Amman, your blog seemed the most interesting to me.
I am certainly not an expert in matters of love. I did love one woman for a long time. Ultimately, she was more in love with someone else. Anyway, I began blogging a few years ago, in part to take my mind off of her!
I think it is possible to love more than one person, and there is certainly more than one form of love. I love my close friends, for example, but without a passionate component. I suppose that the sort of passionate love that I am looking for would have to involve a very strong friendship component, as well. From what I have read, really passionate love lasts only a year or two. After that the neurochemical “addiction” subsides. For people who stay married for many years, or even for life, I am sure that they must have had a strong basis for close friendship, perhaps before they met, or they managed to grow their friendship and make it stronger over the years.
I agree with your comment about love existing in the animal world. Gorillas are an excellent example. Elephants are another. Some species of whales also have very strong family bonds. However, I am not sure that their “love” should be interpreted in anthropomorphic terms. Gorillas and elephants are not monogamous, for example. Also, it is my understanding that they are sexually active only for a brief period once a year. Bonobo chimps, though, display some very human-like sexual behavior that goes far beyond simple perpetuance of the species! Well, with your study of anthropology, you probably already knew these things. I studied the subject a bit, as well. Cultural anthropology was the minor of my first degree. It remains one of my interests!
Hi David,
I am very glad that you found my blog
I am also very glad that it interests you. The love topic is a very complicated thing! seriously. Scientist tried to classify it and categorize it, but for me it does not make any sense at all!
Recently i stopped believing in the idea of the one, i believe that we can fall in love millions of times, and if we fall in love with one person, either we are very lucky or very closed minded, i am not sure which one! but i am a cynic, so don’t listent to me.
I am hoping to see you again on my blog.
I have listened to you Madas, and I have found your words to be worth hearing! I will be happy to hear more.
You are welcome to visit my blog, too. I only post about once a month (I am too busy reading other blogs!), but I try to craft fun and interesting posts. I will look forward to your next one.
Hey, I ran across your blog randomly today, and I had some thoughts to share…
Is it possible, perhaps, that we all just have a misunderstanding of what exactly love is? Afterall, when have we ever trusted humans to really know the truth, and yet we all believe we understand love?
And realistically, what is the difference in a relationship between “friends” and “more than friends”? It seems to me the difference may only be sexual. As such, our these “feelings” of love, mere sexual feelings, and not the feeling of love itself?
So…what is love?
P.S. I can’t describe to you the appreciation I have, living in the US, for blogs from the Middle East. As far as I can tell, you all are actual information we get concerning real people!
Jason, thank you for your note. Yes blogging is an amazing tool that gives an idea about real people to the rest of the world. It is the same for us here. We only see America being represented by Bush and i dont know if you can imagine, but this representation is not a very positive thing for the American people, especially with what is happenbing in our side of the world today. So reading blogs is also the tool for most people to see what the real people as you call them think
Love is a big issue… you are right, I personally dont understand it, there are so many different representaitons to this theory of love that i no longer know what to think of it anymore… again, i am a cynic… so maybe i am not the best representation
Hello, Madas. I also came by your site via Zeyad and am jolly glad to get away from international politics for a while (my one and only comment is that it should be now clear to the world that the only thing worse than the normal situation, where ruthless men wield power to attain their goals without regard for the suffering it causes, is when complete and utter idiots wield that power…)
Anyway, I have to say that it has been my own observation that the “Cinderella myth” has caused an untold amount of unnecessary unhappiness to women–and that the reverse of this myth, the Cosmopolitan magazine approach (’Are you having multiple orgasms on a daily basis? No? Then something is wrong!’) is not much better.
For myself I entered adolescence with a number of quaint views on women and love, the result of spending more time with books than with people. I also really like women–I don’t think there is anything more beautiful or interesting in creation than a beautiful and interesting woman, and my tastes in ‘beautiful’ and ‘interesting’ are quite catholic. The result was that I was 1) a hopelessly unrealistic romantic, 2) too nervous with women to actually engage with them in a sexual context and thus 3) extremely lonely. If I didn’t inherently like women so much I could well have ended up one of those horrid bitter misogynistic men one meets in expat pubs.
As it is I was very lucky. I had a very nice girlfriend for a number of years in which I learned quite a lot about myself. She is still my very good friend. Sometime later I met another woman and it was almost immediately clear to both of us that we were the perfect match. This despite the fact that we are rather odd people and we had both reached the ‘realistic’ conclusion that there was no such thing as a perfect match for either of us! Now we’ve been married a year and some months and we are very happy.
Well, the moral of my autobiography, if it has one, is that love can be a very, very different thing for different people. The one universal key is that you have to understand and accept your own psychological makeup in regards to relationships, and not worry too much if it doesn’t resemble what is in books or magazines or what ‘everyone else’ has. If you really knew ‘everyone else,’ you would probably be shocked by how strange most people are!
I will have to thak Zeyad for giving me this exposure! I am very glad you found my post about Love… Well you have a nice story here.. i am amazed that you say you are the perfect match with your wife… it is really nice to know that some people actually experience this. I think I am a very cynical person… and it is because of my experiences with love makes a person very cynical :)… but i suppose i still have not lost hope that one day i will understand why this feeling is what makes millions and millions of people tick… Thanks again and please veist my blog again.