“Love makes the world go ’round,” they say. Perhaps, if it is not money. When unpacking the phenomenon of ‘love,’ one cannot escape noticing that the seeming opposites of desire and duty are closely intertwined with what people call love.
Can one really love another without experiencing desire for him or her? A Christian love might be able to accomplish that extremely difficult task. Commanded by what it says in Mark 21:31, that is, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” people of faith do try.
Try to get a Fish to run a 5k Marathon
However, most people would call such a commandment an imperative or injunction. As if there was a divine, non-human lawyer somewhere up in the sky to be appealed to. Commandment, imperative, or injunction, all commandments seem to boil down to obligations and duties. Libidonal, personal affection is not required in God’s love, although it may be present in a relationship if not only in wishful thinking.
Freud did not believe that humanity had the innate qualities to naturally live by most biblical commandments. Try to get a fish to run a 5k marathon. That is, perhaps, why the Catholic church invented the confession booth and why their priests can make such a good living off of people’s futile efforts. Christian love can help build exclusive communities, but perhaps not an inclusive world community. People do not live solely by obligations and duties, they also live by desire, sense and sensibilities, passions, interpretations of a lived experience, and − in rare cases, by what they and their peers might signify as real love. People die by dogmas and doctrines.
“What I want from you is for you to want me.” That expression is, in my opinion, the epitome of real love. “What I desire from you is for you to desire me.”
What makes for a desirable Person?
And that begs the question for those considering the matrimonial bond “What makes for a desirable person?” “Am I desirable?” “Is that promising other desirable to me?” There are, in my humble opinion again, three pillars of that thought-after desirability.
- Bodily Fitness
- Mental Fitness
- Lifestyle Fitness
Bodily and mental fitness is fairly self-explanatory. However, and perhaps needless to say, these fitness qualities are not to be taken for granted. Some people are just not born into very fit bodies. People’s mental fitness or lack thereof can be difficult to ascertain. A lot of mental health issues arise and rear their ugly heads only in adult life, perhaps only after consummating married life, or during the later stages of life. Lifestyle fitness can obviously be observed. Acquired behaviors, habits, and social activities may tell quite a bit about a person’s character.
These three fitness qualities are contingent on each other, and a lack of quality in anyone can possibly be compensated for by an abundance of quality in another. Not to worry, people aren’t perfect, if they were it probably would be a totally boring and otherwise unsustainable world. Yet, we all know that ‘the show must go on.’ A lot more could deservedly be said about human fitness. Another post, perhaps.
But paying a bit of attention to the subjectivity of desirability might help a person not to freak out if feeling unworthy of intimate social connections. One can never really know what another finds desirable in one. Bodily, mental, and lifestyle fitness categories are just that: dead categories. They do not compare to any living human being. What one may find desirable among the many qualities of another is often a mystery. “Beauty,” they say, “is in the eye of the beholder.” “There is a lid for every kettle,” they say.
But if confidence in one’s bodily, mental, and/or lifestyle fitness is just not there for a person, that is, if a person cannot find confidence in his or her desirability for another, the Christian love might just be what the doctor ordered. After all, there are actually people who, while deeply compelled by the biblical commandment to ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’ care about vulnerable peers. Religious communities do have their appeal. Yet knowing the limitations of Christian love and mutually acknowledging any personal limitations can go a long way in making a good, bonded life together.
