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Love: the ultimate meaning

'Eternal Love' by Carmen Guedez


Love is the ultimate assertion of life. Nothing says ‘yes’ to life more genially than love and nothing renders life more meaningful than a firm ‘yes’ to it. Love is a benign acceptance of the given reality. Once the reality is accepted, it can be transmuted too. Love is a miracle. It can change arid deserts into breath-taking oases. Love is the fairy kiss that transforms the monster into beauty.
Meaning of life is inextricably related to our attitudes. Meaning is an attitude to the given reality. Reality always demands a response from us. Within my given reality, I must take a stand. I have to live and act within the position I take. I can take the stand of the follower or the leader, optimist or pessimist, sceptic or cynic, whatever. Reality demands a stand.
My stand shapes and colours my experiences, behaviour and action. Those who reached the heights of understanding knew that love was the ultimate response to reality. Love is a divine response, so to say. The Buddha and the Christ, the Mahatma and all genuine teachers of mankind were motivated by the boundless love they bore in their hearts.
When you love someone, you accept that person as he or she is. Your love may transmute that person eventually. That’s also an important factor of love. Love transmutes. Love changes the hell into heaven, the monster into a saint, noise into music.
There is no greater melody than love. Beethoven and Mozart will give way to new geniuses. Shakespeare’s genius will be surpassed by other writers of similar calibre. The Taj Mahal’s resplendence will find its rival in better architecture. Michelangelo and Da Vinci will merge into the miasma of history. The Buddha and the Christ will continue to sway human imaginations. Love has no death.
Love gives you the deepest and the most meaningful relationship with the reality around you, however painful that reality is. Love enables you to listen to the muffled voices of that reality. The breadth of your experience is infinitely multiplied by your empathy with others. Love enables you to suffer with the suffering and rejoice with the joyful, as John Powell said. It gives you a new life every springtime. It makes you feel the impact of the great mysteries of life: birth, growth, suffering and death. Your heart skips along with young lovers and you experience the exhilaration that is in them. You know the ghetto’s philosophy of despair and the sage’s peaks of ecstasy. Love makes flowers bloom on your way and enables you to accept the thorns among those flowers too. Love is the music that moves the planets in their orbits and your heart resonates with the same music.
One of the best passages on love can be found in the Bible: 1 Corinthians 13.  I may be a powerful orator who can speak in the tongues of angels, but I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal if there is no love in my heart. Even if I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all the mysteries and all knowledge, and even if I have faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not self-seeking, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Always. Love is eternal. Perhaps, that is the only eternal thing we have. What better meaning do you want for your life?
  
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This post is the last in a series on Meaning of Life.
The 1st was: What is the meaning of life?
2nd: Religion and Meaning
3rd: Career and Meaning
4th: Science and Meaning
5th: Literature and Meaning
6th: Meaning of Meaninglessness
7th: Meaning of Suffering



Comments

  1. wingsSeptember 20, 2019 at 5:25 PM

    Love is wisdom. Love is not accessible to the materialists. Personally, I have experienced the reward of love after I stopped expecting it from others and started accepting people for what they are and fulfilling their expectations as much as possible. In fact, I have kissed the hearts of several monsters and found the angels in them without any transmutation. What was transmuted was the monster in me into a beautiful angel. Now I am considered an angel by many around me. I can see myself happier than ever. What else will be the reward for love! Thanks, my love!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 21, 2019 at 9:12 AM

      This is the best comment I have received in this whole series. Thank you for that, first of all.

      Touching hearts is the best thing anyone, especially a teacher, can do. That's not easy. We have to let go ourselves. And stop expecting anything in return from others. In fact, the returns may be just the opposite of what we expect. Such is love. But the rewards we reap for ourselves will be great. That's our benefit. I'm glad you've reached that stage.

      Delete
    2. wingsSeptember 22, 2019 at 10:28 AM

      This is the best comment I have received in this whole series.


      What a privilege, sir! Thank you. :)

      Delete
    3. Jacob MatheckenSeptember 23, 2019 at 12:39 AM

      Love is a response thru action..It takes different hues and shapes and meaning ...From one spectrum to the other...As Tomichan illustrated...

      Delete
    4. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 23, 2019 at 8:33 AM

      Thank you.

      Delete
  2. Simrit BediSeptember 24, 2019 at 7:45 AM

    This is a beautiful post.. You have penned down beautifully.. Loved reading it

    ReplyDelete
  3. VidhiSeptember 24, 2019 at 8:05 PM

    Very nice post. And yes love does change people for good.

    ReplyDelete
  4. arushisethSeptember 24, 2019 at 11:04 PM

    What a beautifully written post. Loved it. Love is beautiful!!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lakshmi ShajiOctober 8, 2019 at 11:15 AM

    I simply loved this post. In my opinion one must find love in everything around. Love what you do. I think that can give you more positive energy than anything else.

    ReplyDelete
  6. SAN A KFebruary 20, 2020 at 1:58 PM

    But sir, the world has changed to the conclusion that love has no value. What can u contradict between Love and the present Society??

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 20, 2020 at 9:07 PM

      Love will continue to be a human value as long as humanity exists. Right now humanity is in a phase of degradation. The cycle will turn in due course of time.

      Delete

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