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Has anyone read A River Sutra by Gita Mehta? I just finished reading it for my English class, and loved it.
Anyway, one of the topics that she really digs into is love, and desire, and how they tie into life. One of her characters says "without desire there is no life" and another talks about how difficult it is to imagine love without the symbols of love. I found this to be an interesting idea, that if we didn't have the flowers, the rings, etc, that we wouldn't be able to imagine what love is.
My question; do you think this is true? How do you think that people can show their love without symbols? Obviously through actions, but what if actions are symbols too?
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Love is the ebb and flow of the tides of the human psyche. You've got your land, and you've got your water. You've got a sun pulling a big daily tide around, and a moon pulling a big monthly tide around. When the water is up, that is you loving someone because of who you are. When the water is down, that is you loving someone because of who they are.
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Yep, actions are symbols. Things are only understandable if they fall into a system of symbols.
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"I found this to be an interesting idea, that if we didn't have the flowers, the rings, etc, that we wouldn't be able to imagine what love is."
I think it's absolutely true. Love has a language, just like almost every symbolic emotion has a language, and that language shapes our perception of it. Without those symbols to provide us with context, we would have no concept of the emotion, nor recognition of its existence.
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I really don't buy the bit about the necessity of symbols for feeling and communicating love. While things aren't going so well in my marriage right this moment, I've been madly in love with my wife from pretty much the moment we met, and we've had a successful marriage for eight years without the use of symbols like rings, flowers, anniversaries, exchanges of Valentine's Day gifts, and the like. Those things can be okay, but they aren't necessary to convey love. We've pretty much constantly telegraphed our love for each other by caring, and acting on that caring to make the other's life as good as it possibly can be. This includes intense and nearly constant communication (and the reason that we're having some trouble right now is because the communication has become pretty patchy, due in part to being on different continents), exploration of the other, advice when it's needed, and an ear always. One of the most profound evidences of Christine's love for me has been the level of mental health she has simply demanded from me. If I'm anything less than I can be she sees it as a tragic waste. She's incredibly sensitive to what is going on inside people--she's a natural therapist--and very good at helping them to work through whatever is going on within them. She'll do this with me even when she's pissed as hell at me.
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Of course, if you want to argue that all action is symbol then yeah, of course the only way to convey love is through symbol. That seems to me, though, to reduce the concept of "symbol" to a point of uselessness, since it means that what you're really asking is "is it possible to convey love without taking any action that could be construed as loving".
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I don't believe that all action is symbol, no.
But I do believe that symbols -- be they linguistic or pictoral or whatever -- make it not only possible for us to express abstracts but also shape our conception of those abstracts.
In fact, I'd even go so far as to assert that you and your wife, who do not go in for many of the "traditional" symbols of love, may well have a different concept of love and perhaps even feel a slightly different sensation than a couple who buys into the American cultural semiotics. What you call "love" may very well not be what someone who includes chocolates and flowers and long walks on the beach in their mental image of love considers to be "love." In fact, it almost certainly isn't. But precisely because there is no hard and fast definition of the term, we're left to pin it down with shared symbology.
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One man I lived with wasn't able to speak, sign, and only communicated - with help - via an alphabet board.
Some time during an incredibly frustrating and tiring week, he took my hand, dragged me upstairs, sat me on his bed, and he sat in his chair. And we just sat there together in silence for a quarter hour or so.
No, love doesn't need symbols.
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Love might be expressed via chemicals, but it is not created by them. Nor is it an illusion; anything you feel is real to you.
I view love as the lover prioritizing the beloved's well-being above their own. I am not sure how or who determines "well-being".
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quote: I found this to be an interesting idea, that if we didn't have the flowers, the rings, etc, that we wouldn't be able to imagine what love is.
That is *so* bogus. What really matters is finding out how someone perceives love and to show it in that way. If they like flowers and rings, fine. But not everyone does. And they shouldn't have to. That is what society tells us love is, and they are wrong.
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quote: (and the reason that we're having some trouble right now is because the communication has become pretty patchy, due in part to being on different continents)
I didn't know you were far apart. That sucks. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote: But I do believe that symbols -- be they linguistic or pictoral or whatever -- make it not only possible for us to express abstracts but also shape our conception of those abstracts.
I think it isn't so much about symbols as communication. A symbol can communicate effectively to one person and be totally lost on another. If I bought Porter flowers, he would recognize that I was trying to do something sweet, but he'd really wish I hadn't done that. And I know him well enough to know that he would feel that way. Therefore that particular symbol is an ineffectual way of communicating my love for him.
Making him a tasty meat on the other hand, that communicates love in a symbol he understands.
quote: I view love as the lover prioritizing the beloved's well-being above their own. I am not sure how or who determines "well-being".
Wow, President Hinckley said almost this *exact* same thing.
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I could have love without the cultural symbols. Love is what ties people together. Love is mutual caring for each other. That can be shown in myriad ways.
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Noemon, it sucks - totally sucks - that you and your wife are on different continents. Of course that will put a strain on the relationship. How could it not? I hope you two can be together again soon.
Love is what makes the world go round. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote: I could have love without the cultural symbols. Love is what ties people together. Love is mutual caring for each other.
*whispers* You just used symbols to tell me what you think love is. Now try it without symbols. (Or don't. It would be a waste of time.)
Love is only what we, as two people having a conversation within the context of our societies, call it. It's a nebulous concept, and the mere fact that it can be defined as broadly as "mutual caring" and "willing to put another person's interests above your own" (from Danzig) suggests that there are different perceptions of love based on different priorities. But we knew that.
What is interesting, however, is that I strongly suspect that a large part of what we consider to be love is shaped by our expectations of love and the trappings we apply to it.
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Love changes everything - hands and faces, earth and sky. Love can make the summer fly or a night seem like a lifetime. Love changes everything - nothing ever, ever will be the same. Love lifts us up where we belong, where the eagles fly, on a mountain high. Love makes us act like we are fools, throw our lives away for one happy day. Love is just a game.
[ January 25, 2005, 10:12 AM: Message edited by: Lady Jane ]
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Love is real, real is love Love is feeling, feeling love Love is wanting to be loved Love is touch, touch is love Love is reaching, reaching love Love is asking to be loved Love is you You and me Love is knowing We can be Love is free, free is love Love is living, living love Love is needing to be loved
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quote: My question; do you think this is true? How do you think that people can show their love without symbols? Obviously through actions, but what if actions are symbols too?
Well, if you are arguing that *every* form of communication (actions, touch, words) counts as a symbol, and that you can't have love without communication--well DUHHH.
What was the point again? Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Love is consisted of millions of tiny robots in your bloodstream that distribute select quantities of Necco* extract around your body. The resulting chemical reaction is love.
*You know those little hearts with stuff written on them that taste like chalk?
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I keep my heart in a duck's egg, in an ironclad box, at the bottom of the ocean. So, it is impossible for me to get my heart broken.
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Tom, I said cultural symbols. I could never say "love" and still feel love. That's the one problem I had with The Giver, which I otherwise adore.
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I do not think love requires mutual caring. I can conceive of loving someone who did not love me. Not a desirable state, but possible.
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quote: Tom, I said cultural symbols. I could never say "love" and still feel love. That's the one problem I had with The Giver, which I otherwise adore.
Could you elaborate, kq? I don't know what you mean by this. I read The Giver -- and love it -- but don't remember/understand the issue.
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Jonas has never heard of "love" until he gets a memory concerning it, and he goes home and asks his parents if they love him. They chide him for "imprecision of language". Because they don't use the word for love, they say it doesn't exist.
Off topic, but related to this, have you read the two "sequels" to The Giver? I really liked them. (Also, I was glad to know that Jonas and Gabe survived. That was left kind of ambiguous at the end of the book, and I like happy endings to stories I get that emotionally invested in, at least for the main characters.)
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There were sequels? I have to get those now. I read that book in 7th grade and loved it beyond words. Posts: 378 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote: Jonas has never heard of "love" until he gets a memory concerning it, and he goes home and asks his parents if they love him. They chide him for "imprecision of language". Because they don't use the word for love, they say it doesn't exist.
Ahhhh! Ok, I remember that. But I'm not sure what your objection is -- to them, with no previous experience contextualizing "love," it IS an imprecise use of language.
The sad part, IMO, is not so much that they cannot express love for him. It's that there's no particular evidence that they FEEL it.
quote: Off topic, but related to this, have you read the two "sequels" to The Giver? I really liked them.
There are SEQUELS?!? *jawdrop*
quote: (Also, I was glad to know that Jonas and Gabe survived. That was left kind of ambiguous at the end of the book, and I like happy endings to stories I get that emotionally invested in, at least for the main characters.)
Yeah, I totally was sure that it was like The Little Match-Girl. But in a thread we had a while back (over a year ago, IIRC) about the book, someone linked to a Q&A with Lowry where she confirmed their survival.
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The sequels are Gathering Blue and The Messenger. The last one is a little sadder, but still fulfilling.
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Love is the word used to label the sexual excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old. -- John Ciardi
Love is the same as like except you feel sexier. -- Judith Viorst
Love: the delusion that one woman differs from another. -- H. L. Mencken
Love is the self-delusion we manufacture to justify the trouble we take to have sex. -- Daniel S. Greenberg
Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock. -- John Barrymore
The one who loves least controls the relationship.
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies. -- John Donne
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Could you elaborate, kq? I don't know what you mean by this. I read The Giver -- and love it -- but don't remember/understand the issue.
