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BY OSCAR CRUZ
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“LOVE is a many-splendored thing” so goes a well-known song. And so is the truth about altruistic love, genuine love – neither egoistic nor selfish love.
While it is often heard that love is beyond honest-to-goodness definition, it is however really anything but self-love, something but self-care and affection, self-interest and concern, self-attention and provision.
So it is that love means many things to different individuals, brings about various actions and reactions among different men and women. Passion, infatuation, attraction, and many other emotional factors are usually the more common understanding and implication of love.
But then, one thing is nevertheless definite and defined: Genuine love is altruistic – not egoistic. True love is selfless – not selfish. Real love wherefore is after the good of others, in pursuit of the latter’s wellness, in search of the latter’s welfare. So it is that self-love is the radical contradiction of genuine love.
So it is sad to say that love is at times also used as something downright vicious – such as “love of money”, “love of power”, “love of luxury”. All these and the like are nothing more than basically self-love which can be the cause of anti-others, anti-family, as well as anti-society individualistic stance.
By the way, let it be said that self-love is practically the guarantee of a difficult if not actually “broken” self, a “broken” family, “broken” camaraderie. This is precisely the reason why genuine love is a blessing, self-love is in effect a self-curse.
In its more concrete understanding and application, it is genuine love – geared for the good and advantage, the welfare and benefit of others – that makes love in the family not only dynamic but also blissful. It is the same genuine love that brings about family joy and contentment, family closeness and stability.
It is then understandable that its opposite – hatred in a family – is a most painful reality. The reason is rather simple: As love makes family members dear and endearing individuals to one another, so it is that hatred makes them the enemies among themselves.
There is nothing like the family where love is lived, felt and wherefore experienced among the constituent members thereof – from the parents to the youngest child. And this is something that is both natural and ethical, spiritual and moral – taking into account but the following elementary realities about men and women:
1. It is love that makes a man and a woman get married.
2. It is love that makes a couple have children.
3. It is love that makes a mother carry her child in her womb for months.
4. It is love that makes a father work and care for mother and children.
5. It is love that makes father/mother care for and teach their offspring.
6. It is love that makes parents provide for the education of their children.
7. It is love that makes parents continue guiding their grown-up children.
8. It is love that makes adult children care and provide for their parents.
9. It is love that makes the same children attend to their aging and sick parents.
10. It is love that makes the children have their parents buried after death.
By the way, the above realities are nonsense to “same-sex marriage.”/PN
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