Nicole Garza

Shirley

General Philosophy

9 October 2012

Nicole Garza’s Term

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8). “What is love?” many ask to this day. For all we know this question has been asked ever since our beginning and over many centuries. Yet the only answer we ever seem to get is “Love is the greatest mystery of them all”. But we are all too stubborn to take that for an answer. Love is our greatest motivation in life because it brings us  so-called unending happiness. Love is what drives us in life, to continue living in hopes of that one day when we find our ultimate happiness in life. As free thinking individuals, we know that love has a greater, deeper feeling than just being a mystery. Although many well acknowledged people claim that love is just a sexual attraction one feels for another, a mere idea that humans have a psychological obsession over, I choose to believe that love is a divine gift for us to share sent from God because love raises the same amount of mystery that the idea of God does.

There are really no answers to prove that true unconditional love exists just as there are really no answers to prove that an all supreme perfect deity exists. Philosophy or any such genre of the sort has not been able to offer a concrete explanation to what love is or why it even exists in the first place and of course there are those who claim to have had divine experiences with God but, there is never really proof or someone to prove that these experiences ever actually came into play. We can only rely on our intuition, and decide for ourselves whether or not there is a loving God. A vast majority of the Earth’s population is rather convinced that there is indeed a loving God who constantly teaches us to love unconditionally. This is where faith and religion come in. Primarily focusing on the traditional Judeo-Christian view, humans “are like divine beings because they contain something of the ability to love and know that characterizes their creator” also known as God (Velasquez, pg.57). God has given us the privilege of life and the opportunity to experience and learn the meaning of true love. Love amongst ourselves, amongst nature, friendships, leisures, personal interests, art, music, life, through God himself and so much more. God’s purpose is to teach us human beings the meaning of life which is love. The love that we experience from day to day is a divine love that God shares with us giving reason as to why we none of us can really display hard evidence of love being more than just physical attraction amongst ourselves especially since there is also no hard evidence to proof the existence of God. Why else would such strong feelings of affection exist? 

As stated earlier, throughout the centuries of our existence, many well acknowledged philosophers such as Aristotle have been meaning to answer the question “What is love?” From Aristotle’s point of view, love is practically a true friendship among two persons. “It is based on two people’s mutual recognition of the goodness of the other” (Velasquez, Pg.473). Once we see the goodness in others and realize their passion to follow certain ethical codes and morals, we become happy individuals in their presence because we appreciate others’ ethical and moral codes. We see them as good hearted individuals and therefore we look forward to spending more time with them. Sooner or later we begin to discover that this person starts to make us feel good about ourselves. When two people receive the same reaction from one another they then begin to embrace and share these feelings with which we call love. And because we have these such strong feelings for another, we want the other to receive the best and what’s good due to the fact that they have such high value to us. The higher value a person has to a certain individual, the more needy it is for the individual to have the other safe so that the individual may feel good in return. As when Aristotle says “a friend is one who wishes good to his friend and who does what is good or seems good for his friend... and wishes to spend time with his friend” (Velasquez, pg.475). In conclusion to Aristotle’s perspective on love, love is just a mutual feeling that allows us to feel good about ourselves, that feeling is what we thrive off of and nothing more. 

The scientific perspective on love is a sexual attraction between two individuals, so that we may pass on our genes through many generations by reproducing. Its just the humans’ way of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Psychologists argue that many people constantly confuse mere feelings of attraction with an nonexistent subject called love. They argue that our body/brain is responsible for releasing natural drugs throughout our body systems to make us more excited in the presence of certain others. In other words, its our own benefit that we care about and not the other’s disproving the fact that true love exists. But if that is the case, it still doesn’t explain why some lovers are still willing to give up their lives for the other. If all we care about is ourselves, our benefits, our survival, then why are some willing to throw all that away. Why not just move on with life and find another who can benefit us just the same? Yet we choose death over life for the people we love. We have nothing to benefit from and practically everything to lose. Science really has no answers as to why these situations happen. There is no doubt that what science has to say about love isn’t true, biological anatomy has a lot to do with amorous feelings, but at the same time it isn’t entirely true either. Therefore we cannot totally rely on science to answer what love is. 

My personal experience with love has very much to do with my faith and religion. I have seen what love can do. It has greatly changed me as a person and many others as well. It all started when I participated in a church group retreat to the st. Nicholas camp in Frasier Park. At the time I lacked much faith in God, probably the most out of the two hundred people that were there. Nothing exciting occurred while we were all camping out, so there was absolutely no reason to be rather happy. In fact many found themselves doing boring activities. Yet for many of us, it was the most amazing and happiest experience in our lifetimes, especially for me. For the very first time I cried tears of joy. I never thought that was even possible for the type of person I was. I strongly believe that I was the happiest person in the world that day. I have never been so happy throughout my lifetime and I always find myself wanting to go back in time and repeat all those wonderful moments that I had experienced. For the very first time I believed in God, I felt God, and felt true love. I learned what love is through God. After that experience, I have never been the same... I completely changed along with many others. I now find myself following a greater ethical/moral code, reading the Bible every night, praying every night, attending mass every sunday, appreciating/loving life, and loving God. I am a much happier loving person now. Never in a million years would I have imagined myself to come to this transformation. I too now volunteer for my church in order to help lost teens find love through God. I do it out of the good of my own heart. I want them to find and learn true love just as I have. It is the most beautiful thing ever. Which brings me to my conclusion on what love is. 

My definition of love is God, and God is love. Meaning you know you love someone or something when you are willing to go through pain and suffering and ultimately give up your life for what you most love the same way Jesus of Nazareth gave up his life, suffered and died for us. Did he have reason to?... No. He even died for those who hated him and brought him to his own death. He did it. Now we have been given the wonderful gift of life so that we may be able to love just as God does. God is my love. A perfect example to this conclusion is Lana Del Rey’s song “Born to Die” in which Lana Del Rey explains how she found God and her strong relationship with him and also how through God, she realized that she was indeed born with a purpose in life which is to die for the one she loves the exact same way Jesus was born for the purpose to die for us. 

Resources: Philosophy textbook by Manuel Velasquez, my personal experience, http://www.allaboutgod.com/god-is-love.htm     57-60, 277, 473-476