What True Love Really Is

the world is sick for a surprisingly modest sounding reason we don't understand love and yet we're rather convinced that we do we talk a lot of love of course but generally in terms of a dizzying rapture lasting a few months focused on someone's beauty intelligence and strength we have high ideals and refer with confidence to concepts like justice equality and rights and yet somehow in the mix we avoid talking of the sort of love that would give true life to any of these we are law-abiding and righteous but we are in the grandest sense in the public square without love the most convincing definitions of love in the West have come from Jesus of Nazareth which has proved unfortunate given how easy it is for rational types to confuse an overcoming of supernatural faith with a neglect of the subject of love to move forward we require a new philosophy of love in effect a powerful secular religion of love this should be read out after the news and its tenets taught to CEOs and supply chain managers we should put it on t-shirts and it should be as common and more useful to say I'm trying to learn to love as to announce a desire to become fit or famous it's no insult to have to acknowledge that even though we inhabit a culture soaked in romanticism we have problems understanding love and even though we've had plenty of crushes and heard plenty of songs about love was still taking our first steps towards grasping what love might actually be here then a seven key constituent ingredients of love charity love means above anything else benevolence and gentleness towards what is failed disgraced broken unappealing angry and foul in other people and in ourselves love isn't about an admiration for strength it's about directing sympathy in a most unexpected directions but what is messed up lost and in pieces and at what we might hate resent and be frightened of anyone can express an interest in perfection to love is to devote an active charity towards the mistakes and aberrations one day we will all require the charity of others in one way or another we'll be on our knees and we will need people to look past our evident failings in a tender search for our deeply hidden merits imagination to love with imagination is to look beneath the surface where there may be rage cynicism brittleness or transgression and to picture the suffering and pain that got a person to this place to love with imagination is to fill in the better reasons why others are behaving as they are imaginative love knows that we are all somewhere desperate it seeks out in our desperation and treats it with sorrowful gentleness kindness there are so many fighters for social justice so many people determined to make a better world they denounce their enemies and feel certain of their cause but along the way they have a faithful habit of forgetting to be kind in their denunciations of the evils of others there is precious little mercy humility tenderness or grace it's not enough to be right or just to be kind is to know that everyone even sinners and in a way especially sinners deserve ongoing sympathy and mercy it's never simply because someone is wrong that we have any right to cease showing them the greatest kindness forgiveness to forgive is to know that we are in our own way as guilty as the next person given what we all are we have no option but to cut each other some slack of course we failed and been hasty and less than admirable but that's no reason forever to withhold love we learn to forgive when we are no longer self righteous that is when we're brave enough to fathom the darker sections of our own hearts loyalty to love means being loyal to people this could be ourselves even though the crowd no longer agrees outside the mob may be cheering but we continue on the same side with steadfastness and an unbuttoned faith generosity love overflows it isn't about loving just one person it encompasses the love of someone you've just met of strangers in another land of the earth of plants weevils house bats and that moth by the window who might be dead by nightfall patience we want others to meet our hopes right now but true love means giving people the time to mature and develop to go wrong to wander in another direction and not to shout at them but to give them every chance to grow at their own pace towards their better selves if we can believe wholeheartedly in some of the above it won't matter who we vote for or what our causes we can count as part of what is helping we should be almost done with romantic love by now we should be setting our sights on the challenge of this sort of love yet it's not surprising if we're still only at the beginning we're just starting on the path to being human love is a skill that we can learn our relationships book calmly guides us with calm and charm through the key issues of relationships to ensure that success in love need not be a matter of good luck for more click the link now

Channel: The School of Life

Views: 3,650,386

Keywords: the school of life, schooloflife, education, relationships, alain de botton, philosophy, talk, self, improvement, big questions, love, wellness, mindfullness, psychology, how, to, hack, PL-WORKCAPITALISM, true love, love lies, love songs, what is true love?, what is love, 真正的爱真的是什么, Que amor verdadeiro é realmente, Quel est le véritable amour, Was wahre Liebe wirklich ist, Lo que el verdadero amor realmente es, वास्तव में क्या सच प्यार है, the secret to love, the secret to love law of attraction

Id: bw-_iPIcGIU

Length: 6min 6sec (366 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 04 2018