Why Love?

Alexander Lowen once said that man’s natural behavior is open to love and to life. However our culture has led us to believe that this is not so, that we must be closed and mistrustful. We think that by acting in this way we will not be hurt by life’s surprises but in fact what happens is we are not taking advantage of lives. Because of too much suffering we sometimes want to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. We want to live in a place wherein no people can hurt us. A place where pain, suffering, sadness, hopelessness, fear and all those unpleasant feeling do not exist.

How many times did we try to push those people who truly love us away simply because of the fear that one day they will abandon us? That one day they will grow tired of loving us and will soon depart to continue on their own way. We hold back our emotions; we didn't allow ourselves to go all through them. We are too busy of being afraid. We are afraid of the pain of losing someone. We are afraid to do the things that we truly desire. We stopped listening to our hearts so it stopped speaking to us. It grew tired of being ignored.

We forgot that famous line that says “it is better to love and lost that never to love at all.” We stopped loving because in love there’s always pain. We think we suffered too much. All of us had this experience. At some point we have each said through our tears “I’m suffering for a love that’s not worth it.” We suffer because we feel we are giving more than we receive. We suffer because our love is going unrecognized.

Being good, decent, respectable person will mean that others will see you as weak, vulnerable and easy to manipulate. Good people are always taken for granted that’s why sometimes they don’t want to be good or nice anymore. Our society is unappreciative and abusive. They will say that “nice people” don’t exist anymore but when they do find one I’m sure as hell they will just take that person for granted. Where’s the path to justice? None. It is blocked by the wicked hearts of men. So we become mistrustful in people around us. We built fences around hearts and closed the door that leads to human relationship. But God who accompanies our every step will be annoyed because he can see that we are not paying attention to the miracle of life.

And so we continue to love despite the fear roaming around our hearts. We tell ourselves that the fear of suffering is worst than suffering itself.  After all when we die and our soul arrives at the final judgment God will only ask “Did you love while you were alive?” for that is the essence of life the ability to love.