Dangerous Liaisons

When everything falls apart, it feels devastating. This is because something dies. Something dies that we had gotten used to. Something we loved or hated or loathed or admired. In both cases the loss doesn't lack gravity. When you love something and then you lose it somehow, you feel sorry, because you feel disorientated and you try to get it back or even replace it. When you hate something and you lose it, you feel relieved, but, strangely enough, you, too in this case, try to get it back, revive it, or even replace it. As soon as possible. So it would seem that the need to feel repulsion or great love are both necessary. Someone once suggested and firmly believed that hate was nothing but a different expression of passionate love. The explanation would be retrieved in the fact that in order to hate something, you need to love something else. You hate something, because you love something.

If we accept that, then there arises another theory: We love others because in a subconscious way we hate, despise, or what you will- ourselves. Not necessarily in a fashion that we crave to be identical, but rather in one that supplants our soul and existence in comparison to others'. We secretly degrade our own and prefer others to ourselves. As a supplement, I might add that this explains the pains of solitude. When we feel alone, we might feel incomplete, afraid, lost, melancholy or in general, experience bitter emotions. Well, maybe all this comes from the fact that we simply loathe ourselves. We hate ourselves, so having time alone with yourself becomes intolerable. We can't stand it and we need the presence of another person. Possibly, by getting involved with others we hope we'd iron out the flaws or imperfections we spot in us, or that they don't exist. This is an utterly egotistical process, which of course stays subliminal most of the time. From a cynical's point of view we use others.

I would like to add at this point that there is a definition of love as the capability (/emotional state), by which you offer the other person the space to become who they are. So, here fits the cynical's reaction. We accept someone in our lives, un amant as the french say, in hope that they make things better in our lives. Because we want to get away from ourselves. Then, we get upset and mad at people who don't give us the freedom to evolve as we'd like. Here I find there is a grand ambiguation, a supreme conflict. We allow someone into our zone, because we "love" them (there is not a speck of irony in the quote marks), and then we send them away because they did not make us room for ourselves. To make what I am trying to say more clear; level one- self vs self, level two- "other" vs self, level three- self vs "other". Of course the use of "vs" does not refer to any sort of hostility. In other words, we can't stand ourselves, we love others who can, and hope they will make us do the same thing (amongst others, I have nothing against love) and then when we feel restricted in some way, we search shelter from others to ourselves. Maybe because in the end we discover we like ourselves better? because we love ourselves more? I wouldn't dare to offer an answer.