PRAISE TO LOVE


Who better than Leo Tolstoy to start with such an impressive subject. He reminded us that 'Love gives a sense to human life'. This we know since Antiquity. But what is love? Many sages through centuries have tried to resolve this question
I did notice in his 'Calendar ofWisdom' few expressions that I liked and this one, he entered on December 15: 
'What a joy to let our love express itself freely: the love of life, the love of oneself, the love of the other'


When the other enters your life, you do not belong to yourself anymore. The love for the other goes beyond any sensation. It transforms you, it captures you, makes you forget everything  so much it overcomes you. The absence of love is the worst plight that can be, to possess it makes us invincible, inaccessible to suffering.

I believe, hard as a rock, that love is the force the most powerful in life, the most important thing in life. I also believe that without it our life will not be our life. Moreover, there is no love in the future. Love can only exist in the present moment. Love is the water of the heart. Without it, it dries out.
Isn't it that only love can fill the loneliness of our days?

When will we learn that love is to give, not to want to possess. In brief, love gives a sense to life.
It is Victor E Frankl who recognized that ' Love is the only mean to seize another human being in the heart of hearts of  his personality. No one can know the very essence of another human being, unless he loves him or her

If so many praises are made to love, it is because  it deserves them.
And no one except a witness who lived the vagaries of such a sentiment can recognize the extent of each of these words. The weight of each quiver caused by so many outbursts.

A personality that people of my generation know well, Brigitte Bardot once said: 
When you look at the other one sleeping, at night, and that tears of happiness climb to your eyes, it is because 
We really love.

One of her  fellow country woman , Françoise Sagan said: Love, like life , you do not take to the bank. It is to be spent .And later it thinks

There are two things for which all my life, I dedicated an incommensurables passion, finding them the most important in life and a certain Mark Werner in his book  The Breath of the Gods found them a winner. He simply said love is the victory of imagination over intelligence.

And what to think of what Alexander Pope wrote, explaining to us that love is the glory, the gag, the enigma of this world. Three situations rather contradictory but so enriching.
The Jewish Wisdom taught us that love provided without critic is not a true love. This indeed mixes spirit and heart while I had wished to dissociate them. One must believe that critic has its strong points to deserve such a praise.

For a believer or someone who knows Martin Buber, he will remember that whoever loves resemble God as well as the world. Unless 'love is only a utopia', another nice word of Françoise Gilot. 

We all speak of this famous happiness that we all pursue for it will be the culmination of all our expectations and yet, Fyodor Dostoyevsky recognized that with love we can live even without happiness.
And for Gustave Flaubert, ' love is a spring plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.

A little while ago, to better speak of our subject, I read The Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman. She seemed to resume the subject by one word:' Love is this great intangible' . Further, she added many more details, amongst them: If you want to have an idea of love, look at the birds in your garden, look at the pigeons, contemplate the bull when he is presented to your young cow, look at this proud stallion that two of his stable lads conduct toward a peaceful mare who is waiting for him and moving  her tail to the side to greet him.

See his eyes sparkling, listen to his HENISSEMENT, contemplate his leaps, his curves, his ears perked up, this mouth that opens in small convulsions, his nostrils which smell, this fiery breath leaving them, this mare which recovers and gets restless, this compelling movement with which he jumps on the object destined to him by nature, but do not be envious and think of the advantages that human nature takes pleasure to give us. In love, they compensate all that nature gave to the animals , the strength, the beauty, the lightness and the speed.

This same author throws at us a warning. In case we renounce at this magic word. Without love, life is a night in the desert full of wolves.

Talking about desert, Beaudelaire comes to mind. It was him who said: Love is an oasis of horror in a desert of boredom. Many think that love is a mystery. Yet, of all the mysteries in the universe, love is the most complex. Love is much closer to the divine. One must not laugh about that. Love is self-giving, the sacrifice, the forgiveness.

I give credit to Shalom Ash who wrote these beautiful words in his ' Petersbourg' 
If the reader asks himself the question to the effect whether love is worth it to be attached bed to it, he must remember this word of Socrates: Love comes from the individual himself, and once awake, it must be renewed by questioning oneself.

In fact, there is more than love in life and many people prefer to devote their time to other adventures.
Well, a famous student of Confucius, Mee-Tee, reminds us that if you raise people to praise wealth, power and glory, so naturally they will commend these things. If you raise people to love the feeling of love, they will start to live and love

Who would have said better than Milan Kundera? We all believe that it is unthinkable that the love of our life could be something light, something which weighs next to nothing, we imagine that our love is what it should be, that without it our life will not be our life.

There is no love in the future. Love can only exist at the present moment. A man who doesn't manifest his love at the present didn't love at all. These words are of Leo Tolstoy

As a warning, here is what Jean Cocteau throws at us: all men are beasts when they have no love.

Lecteur, si tu as un commentaire, une idée, une suggestion, s'il te plait communique la moi à Jacques@SagesseOuEsTu.com