Love and Lust - Agape Love - Essay Example

Love and Lust Agape Love was the first of his family. An old, wise man, He had learned to love all things living. He could never get offended or hurt because his ability to forgive was too strong. No one could understand how someone was so in peace with life and its harshness. During his life, He did all he could to deliver others from suffering. One day, He found an abandoned baby girl. He took her in and named her Love. Through the years living with her Father, she inherited traits of His personality, although less intensely. She eventually met a handsome lad named Pleasure and together they had twin boys: Affection and Desire. The twins were almost impossible to tell apart because they were so identical in form. However, their personalities were outrageously different. Affection inherited his mother’s and Grandfather’s inclination to care and forgive. Altruistic and selfless, Affection always put others before him even though he never wanted anything in return. Being near the ones he loved was what made him most happy. His best friend, Rationality was his loyal companion—he always gave Affection the best advice. A hopeless romantic, Affection never stopped looking for his significant other—someone he could care for until the end of his days. Desire was the opposite. A real daredevil, the boy grew up chasing adrenaline rushes. He didn’t care about the past or the future as long as he was having fun in the present. Completely selfish, he was oblivious to everyone else’s feelings. In his teenage years, he would flirt with all the beautiful girls, especially the ones who were already taken—Desire himself couldn’t understand why, but he liked them the most. His best friend was a girl named Jealousy; she was a real bad influence for the boy and often convinced him to make unwise and hasty decisions. Despite his brother’s friend Rationality’s best efforts, Desire always chose his course of actions poorly. Affection and Desire represent love and lust, two powerful feelings that are strongly present among people. Even though they seem similar, they are of very different natures. Love is a force that drives one to selflessly work for his loved one’s well being. Lust on the other hand, is a selfish force that makes one deny logic and common sense in order to attain his pleasure or quench his greed—often overcoming the subject’s willpower to resist it. However, some argue that the balance between the two can prove beneficial to both sides of a romantic relationship. Throughout the centuries, mankind strived to understand the difference between the two twin feelings. The understanding of the loving affection and the lustful desire was the subject of countless philosophy and writing masters. In the book Venus and Adonis, William Shakespeare, the greatest English writer of all time, celebrating love wrote that “[l]ove comforteth like sunshine after rain, but Lust’s effect is tempest after sun” (Shakespeare 1278). During the sixteenth century, when Shakespeare lived, technology was still undeveloped; therefore, the seasons and the weather had a major effect on the people’s survival. Sunny weather meant that the crops would thrive and people wouldn’t freeze to death. So, when he compares Love to the Sun rising after a cold rain, he is effectively saying that love is as powerful as a force that keeps people alive and well, as the sunlight does. However, Lust, and its short-lived pleasures are comparable to a tempest, which lays waste to the fields and the houses and covers the Sun, which keeps them alive. Still, in the same stanza, Shakespeare continues his comparison by saying that “[l]ove is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.” Because of its selfless nature, love is a feeling that causes the object’s well-being to give joy to the subject, thus, it doesn’t need to deceive to achieve its goal—every action is a fruit of genuine affection. Lust however, is a selfish feeling in which the subject is completely oblivious to the object’s fate or state of mind. Deception is the weapon of the lustful; the short-term fixes that relieve the withdrawals of those cursed by Lust is often a product of manipulation and well told lies. The curse of Lust and its nefarious effects that hinder logical thinking and common sense were already a subject of study even before Shakespeare graced the Earth with his presence. Old renaissance master Dante Alighieri, in the first part of his famous Divine Comedy, wrote about the sinners stuck in the second circle of hell—those who committed the mortal sin of Lust. Alighieri wrote: “I learned that those condemned to this brand [o]f torture are called carnal sinners, [t]hose who put reason under Lust’s command…” (Alighieri 5.37-9, 54-7). In this passage, Alighieri acknowledges the powerful influence lust has over the reasoning capabilities of those cursed by it. The insatiable hunger for pleasure drives the lustful into a state of carelessness; logic and common sense are often set aside in order for said person to pursue its vices. Alighieri proceeds to describe the inhabitants of the second circle of hell: “[they] chose [a] life of lust and corruption, [t]hen tried to wipe the disgrace away [b]y legalizing [their] own kind of degeneration.” Those verses reveal a truth about the lustful: they are aware of the degenerative nature of their acts—yet they choose to twist the perception of the truth in their own minds to try and forgive themselves for acting so. He further writes: “Oh justice of God! What an enormity [o]f strange torture and penance! Why do we so waste ourselves with iniquity?” (Alighieri 7.19-21). Through those verses, it can be inferred that the character Dante himself is not shielded from the feeling that brought the sinners to the second circle of hell. By using the first person plural, Dante admits having felt the unholy desire that furthers draw the sinners from the true feeling of love. This last passage suggests an innate human propensity to desire and lust—with the willpower to resist temptation being the only way to avoid their grasp. Love and lust—or affection and desire—are not completely opposite concepts however. One might argue that the balance between the two is what gives birth to a healthy romantic relationship. Stendhal, pen name of Marie-Henri Beyle, is considered one of the most complex writers in French literature and his ideas regarding Love are worthy of a deeper analysis. In his book On Love, Stendhal explains that love is divided in different kinds. On physical love, the author says that “[e]veryone knows the love founded on this kind of pleasure: and all begin that way at [adolescence], however parched and unhappy the character.” (Stendhal 20). In this quote, the author presents his view on a kind of love derived from Desire alone. Later in his book, Stendhal states that all kinds of love start with admiration; physical love is no exception. It starts with admiration, but desire overcomes it, thus it lacks affection and the urge to care for the object’s well-being. On the other hand, when admiration is greater than desire itself, a new kind of love is born; Stendhal calls it “vanity-love.” Affecting men and women alike, this ostensive type of relationship has its roots on the high status standards set by society. On the existence of this kind of “love” among men, the author wrote: “The vast majority of [them] […] desire and have a fashionable woman, in the same way as a man gets a fine horse, as something which the luxury of a young man demands.” Similar behavior was witnessed in women as well. Stendhal wrote: “[R]ecall with amusement [that] pretty [women] […] who could not help finding any man charming who was Duke or Prince.” Disgusted by this kind of “love”, Stendhal added that “[t]he happiest case of this uninspiring relationship is that in which to physical pleasure is added habit.” His deep reflections on true love led Stendhal to abhor behaviors that falsely use “love” as an excuse or means to achieve something else than the happiness of living a corresponded-love relationship. For him, true love was born of admiration and hope—in the sense of believing the possibility of a happy relationship; to Stendhal, love “is to have pleasure in seeing; touching, feeling, through all the senses and as near as possible, an object to be loved and that loves us.” However powerful the feeling, Love is susceptible to issues. The author wrote: “The lover comes to doubt of the happiness, to which he looked forward: he scans more narrowly the reasons that he fancied he had for hope” (Stendhal 25). The formation of habit undermines the excitement of a new love; the fiery passion is besmeared with the rise of a routine and the happiness is put into question in the lover’s mind. Even true love, the one born of admiration and nurtured by affection, is confounded to decay in some cases. However, there is another kind of love—and it is invulnerable. Neither the ever-present menace of routine nor the threat of pride that prevents lovers from forgiving wrongdoing can somehow hope to belittle its intensity. It is the one love that marches forth against all enmity—Agape Love. It is the love which no man can feel. Agape Love is essentially the love of God for His creations. The only well-known literary work to describe its grandiosity is the Bible itself. One can try and comprehend the dimension of this kind of Love through the Apostle John’s teachings. John wrote: “He that [loves] not [knows] not God; for God is love.” (1 John 4:8 KJV). In this passage, John explains the nature of God—the all-loving Lord is love itself. This becomes clear when he states that if one feels love, he knows God, because in essence they are the same. John also wrote: “Greater love [has] no man than this” (John 15:13). The Apostle explains that no man can match the Father’s capacity for unconditional love—as men’s love is still subject to the effect of mundane influences. The Apostle also wrote: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16). This passage reveals the intensity of Agape Love; God, loved his creations so much that he send his only child, Jesus Christ, to walk among men and relieve them from their ailments and sorrows. The Messiah, all-loving as his Father is, gave his life so mankind’s sins would be absolved. This is the proof of Agape Love—the will to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to save the objects of this kind of Love. Agape Love is the one which cannot be tainted by the actions of men or the degrading march of time—it is the transcendence through the feeling of Love—perfect in such a way that human nature prevents men from comprehending its full meaning. However far mankind may be to comprehend the essence of Agape Love, that didn’t stop men to try and understand love—and its counterpart, lust—in general. Their influences inspired countless artists to eternize them—as majestic figures in marble or as words written in worn-out pages that are still read to this day. The relationship between the two feelings was the subject of many important pieces of work; some argued that they are complete opposites—two extremes that cannot possibly coexist—however, balance is a concept that supports stability, which is vital to a healthy relationship. The meaning of true love is also a subject that was thoroughly discussed over the centuries. True love is born of admiration and hopes of a better, happier future. True love endures the challenges life presents. True love does not let extinguish the fire of passion—it is zealous for the needs of both subject and object—and both feel the same way. True love does not aspire to be one day as powerful as the ultimate Agape Love, as this feeling is not reserved for men—yet it does aspire to never let cease its existence.   Works Cited Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Edited by Peter Alexander, Collins, 1951. Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Translated by Rev. Henry Francis Cary, G. Bell & Sons, 1910. Stendhal. On Love. Translated by Philip Sidney Woolf and Cecil N. Sidney Woolf, Brentano’s, 1916. The Bible. Authorized King James Version, Oxford UP, 1998. Read More