love, an illusion?

Perhaps one of the best questions I have ever come across on the topic.
The question might come from experiences with it.
When it is sometimes perceived as real and some other times seems like an illusion
We shall follow the line of thought listed below.

I. What is love?
II. Attributes of love
III. Problems of love
IV. NOTIONS of love
V. Why love?
VI. Real or Illusion
VII. Sustainability of love

WHAT IS LOVE ?

It’s hard and also in a sense slightly foolish to try and compartmentalize feelings, because that would mean we presume we understand them (the feelings) fully. We are trying through this question humbly to and make an attempt to decode it.
We have different conceptions of love!
Most look at it like a feeling; AN EMOTION; Like happiness or grief.
Some feel it’s more of A PREDISPOSITION to feel those emotions. Like a heightened capacity to experience those emotions.
Some (of which I am at the moment one) say it’s A STATE IF MIND.
Others feel it’s a PLATFORM, a channel through which stimulus and emotions (related to the beloved) are perceived, received and reacted to in a different, special way.
If love is indeed an emotion it will be stupid of us to expect it to be sustainable. After all other emotions like happiness and anger are never permanent. They are only passing feeling we engage in. if that’s how it is we can’t ALWAYS BE IN LOVE. However all of us do have some predisposition to be more happy or aggressive. Love could be something like that – a mood perhaps – what Psychology defines as a mood is defined as the prevailing psychological state (habitual or relatively temporary). It is further defined as a feeling, state or prolonged emotion that influences the whole of one's psychic life. It can relate to passion or feeling; humor; as a melancholy mood or a suppliant mood.

So, the interpretation of the word itself is so complex that it makes it difficult for us to take any stance. Unnecessary complications arrive because of varied and unrelated interpretations of the same concept or construct. It adds to the confusion. I am laying down different takes so as to help you think in multiple directions and take different perspectives, which, according to me, is the only way to lead oneself to the answer to such subjective issues.


ATTRIBUTES OF LOVE

To understand this better let’s take different things that are commonly associated with love.
As we explore this it’s important that our ideas of the concept in question have been defined by a lot of things that we have encountered unknowingly and unintentionally since our birth. Most of which unfortunately have originally been made for the purposes of self expression, art, business and entertainment. And hence is a big question mark in them. These aren’t things wise men should rely on. But we are all excused because we can only get as wise as our ignorance. I am listing down a more intuitive attributes of the concept that we collectively might have gathered from various unknown sources.

Although it’s difficult to quality and sustain all of these with a particular person over a long period of time, I still very much think we are capable of it. Consider the way human beings feel for their passions, the artist feel about their art. We are all very much capable of it. Whether or not it’s realistic or sustainable is another question. Reality and illusion can coexist.

The characteristics that are most striking about love are as follows:
i. Romance
ii. Commitment
iii. Lust
iv. Intimacy
v. Respect
vi. Irrationality
vii. Unconditionality
viii. Forgiveness
ix. Elated sense of beauty
x. Care
xi. Sacrifice
xii. Inspiration
xiii. Irreplaciblity
xiv. Enhanced artistic capacities
xv. Longing
xvi. Trust
xvii. Honesty
xviii. Complete submission
xix. Loyalty
xx. Non-judgemntality

So you see love is like a very demanding child. It is a vortex that can suck you and everything around you in itself. It’s gravitating and has the capacity to pull you out of everything for an average human being who is driven by conventional things might not be able to give himself the opportunity to explore the full potential of love. By conventional I mean aspiration or wanting a job, earn a decent sum of money and make it though the lifetime comfortably; basically needs for survival. To put it in crude terms they are in a rut and in a way partially incapacitated of exploring the full potential of what love has to offer.

Hence love is often looked at as a luxury. Indeed it is. Let’s assume a scenario where one has no worldly aspirations and problems. Let’s say he doesn’t have social obligations and family responsibilities. Would love had been sustainable then? My guess says yes! Ideal profile of people who fall in love are the ones who have a well to do lifestyle, don’t have to earn for a living etc. normal people are too busy filling their bellies and take care of the basic necessities of life to be able to even think of love. But we all must agree that we have been there and experienced that at least once. Love comes to all.

I think this feeling is very much real. If a dog, an animal considered to be much love than human beings in the evolutionary tree, we human beings for sure will and whose is able to feel things with intensity or perhaps more. The difference is that we can’t dedicate so much time to the feeling because unlike the dog we have so much to take care of.

PROBLEMS OF LOVE

That being said it’s equally true that most people almost all in fact will fall in love at least once. Which is a testimonial to the fact that LOVE IS VERY MUCH REAL. Only, that it’s very fragile. Their meaning change over time, for it’s a journey that you experience with the emotion and sometimes with the other person and his emotions. It is bound to evolve and take different shapes in the course of time. It is also vulnerable – just like our minds (where all the mechanisms related to love take place). The combination is what makes it so fragile. All this put together makes it unsustainable and it gradually later starts to feel like an illusion.

NOTIONS OF LOVE

Unknowingly and without any specific intention to deceive us, the society impresses upon our naïve minds certain ideas of the construct. We can’t blame anyone. We are all born into it. And there are certain specific people one might be able to point out. Although I have a deep and passionate admiration for all kinds of artists I have a bone to pick with them. They are hard core romantics. And we all admire them for what they are. They are fascinating and so are their creations. They can romanticize with death and melancholy. They can also romanticize with the longing for the beloved. In short, they are crazy people. And their notions of love aint healthy for normal human beings like us. Their job is to make normal things look larger than life. Love is any which ways larger than life and it gets further exaggerated when looked at through the lenses of these artists.

These poets painters sculptors musicians song writer etc create master distortions and very creative and engaging ones which is obviously very appealing to any human being. If only we could control these creations the society would have a more realistic view of the world and their lives. However the function of art itself is consolation and symbol of something that human beings normally do not get to experience.

But as much as the artist are to be in a very mild sense for lack of a better word, blamed for distorting the reality, it is equally the fault of the common people to indulge too much in these larger than life creations, we take it too seriously and consider it the ideal life. In a sense we have also been made to believe, partly by the art and partly by our flawed reasoning, that LOVE is the only thing that would bring us joy and happiness. The one thing that all of us SHOULD indulge in. there is a little something we could do after being enlightened about this. But the ideas have now so deeply been incorporated and deep seated in the subconscious that it’s okay to forgive ourselves to have a more than normal interest in love. But that has to be excised with caution. We can’t indulge in it too much.

The MIND IS hence VERY SUGGESTIBLE.
To add onto it, it, the mind modifies its beliefs, knowledge, perceptions and even the feelings on the basis of what is most convenient to us so as to minimize the pain the tension and the sufferings. And seek what we desire the most. We are all driven by what Freud's calls ‘THE PLEASURE PRINCILE ‘. Jeremy Bentham proclaims in his theory of utilitarianism that pain and pleasures are our sovereign masters.
David Hume’s quote furthers emphasizes this point.

WHY LOVE?
As far as my analysis goes, I think us ‘FALL IN LOVE’ because we have been conditioned to!

La Roush Foucault’s beautiful one-liner on the topic is very intriguing.

It gives us an insight into the fact that love might not actually be as real as we normally consider it to be.

It seems pretty clear and evident that Love after all might just be something that we always want to be in and the person is a mere agent, just a object to project our feelings on, feelings which are in a way self inflicted – by the subconscious ( like most, all other things ).
I do however think that not all of us have a capacity to experience the epitome of love. We have now understood that the idea of love has been propagated and populated by the artists, namely the painters, writers, sculptors, poets etc. other artists then added to the list of contributions – like the musicians, composers, singers, songwriters, movie makers, actors etc. art is deeply influential. It targets the emotions are as I stated earlier we are very vulnerable. Especially any idea conveyed through art hits directly where the mind is most suggestible; at the amygdela; through the channel of emotions!
I think from a very rational perspective, Love can be looked at as a trend that has picked up like wild fire in a forest. We all want to fall in love. That’s the kind of things we have been exposed to all our lives, since childhood especially. To add to that the marketing gimmicks that have been played on us by the corporate further re-emphasize the idea. Everything together has made us to be everything that might not be universal truth s

I read a line which read as follows
“We are generally not loyal to the one we love but mostly to the FEELING of Loving and being loved “

Love gives us a very unique opportunity. Most of us live survive and die. No one will remember us expect a few family members and friends. We never get celebrated; we never get to be the hero. We spend a lot of our times thinking how everyone around us seems to be having such a beautiful life and we on the other hand seem to living a life of mediocrity. Love gives us that opportunity. To be made to feel like a hero, to be made to feel like a protagonist and to be celebrated! To be made feel beautiful. It’s not a coincidence that we have beautiful and heroic names for our ideal partners, ‘princess, Mr. Perfect, Picture Perfect, Hero’, love is so engaging because we get to live a full fledged drama. We feel like we are a part of our favorite novel or our favorite film. It’s only natural that we would want to fall in love.
We get a unique opportunity in love – the one to be heroic and celebrated! To be treated like a hero for not doing anything for being celebrated without having to show anything for it. That never happens in real life. That can’t be possible in real life the world is too harsh and logical when weighing rewards for our work. It’s like living your favorite character from perhaps a movie or a book. It’s something none of us in our normal (selfish and sentimental) minds would ever let go off.
Love also gives us a unique opportunity to experience almost all seven stages of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Nothing of that sort ever happens otherwise. It’s fulfilling in itself. It’s also a great source of mental preoccupation. It’s a superb way of escapism! It’s not a coincidence that most love affairs take off during the lull periods of our lives. When nothing happening takes place at school or work. It’s a great way of killing time without realizing to even consciously wanting to do it like everything else is driven by and in the subconscious

REAL OR ILLUSION

It’s important that the question is answered in the light of what I canvas I just built.
Love is very much real.

However it becomes illusionary when you confuse it with relationships and marriages. That’s not the goal of love. In fact LOVE has no goal. Love is fulfilling in itself. It is not the means to an end. It’s the end in itself. It’s not like love is a source or a mean of happiness and bliss. The fact that it fetches us all that we ever wanted is a happy coincidence. We can’t expect love to do anything. Or indulge in it to get something out of it. Like Michel Sandel, the modern American political philosopher and my dearest teacher pints out, in his book titled “what money can’t buy
“We are becoming something of a market society from being a market economy” It’s difficult to digest this idea because we are used to do something to gain something else. Do a job to earn, earn for money, money for luxury and luxury for higher social status, social status for self esteem. We ought to think for ourselves and redesign our thinking patterns and make an expectation, especially for love.
We look at Relationships and marriages are a way of capturing the feeling and the enthusiasm and keeping it forever. Like wanting to freeze time and space! Because of this desire to never let go... But as soon as that happens, we finish everything. For, love is a journey, a quest without a definite finishing point.

SUSTAINABILITY OF LOVE
This entire put together makes loves difficult to sustain. But I think there is a ray of hope.
I am outlining my little hypnosis of a theory of love.

The theory postulates kinds of love
Although I believe the topmost form of love is the only true kind there is. I have added two more forms to incorporate and suit most of the other kinds of experiences that we choose to call love.
I am briefly outlining the features – CORE CHARACTERISTICS and basis of each of the three kinds of love. I am intending to broadly list down factors that cause these forms of love.

It’s interesting how the causes of Elemental Love become the effects Expedient Love.
And how the effects of Epitome love are also the causes of Expedient love.
The epitome form of love is the truest most sustainable kind of love there is.
When we mistake what should be the effects for the causes we end up in a disaster. Love become unsustainable and hence SEEMS LIKE AN ILLUSION. Epitome
I get a feeling that only the artistic ones are capable of the third kind of love. Note that I am referring only to the artistic ones not the artists. An element of craziness and larger than life perspective are the ones who indulge in this kind. And I think its best kept that way because although the love is very much sustainable. It doesn’t conform to the norms of the society and we all understand marriages and relationships come under the realms of society, with a tether of having to live within a community and grow a family. I also feel that different kinds of people are only capacitated to experience only one form. Like the artists will never be able to experience the first kind and the convention practical ones amongst us aren’t capable of feeling the third kind.

I mildly oppose the idea of love culminating into marriage. However if at all there is any kind of love that might lead to a sustainable long-lasting marriage it would be type III. Type I might also become successful if looked at from a very transactional perspective but it has no capacity to be fulfilling. It is one of those types that lead to what is referred to in the triangular theory of love as Empty love. Where the partners feel so internal peace but the relationship looks bright and happy on the outside. The third kind also highly likely to be very successful for the partners and the relationship, But it’s dangerous for everyone else related to the partners. , The society, parents’ family and relatives. And most importantly the kids that might (if at all) originate from these kinds of relationship. My GUESS is that the personalities of people who fall in this form of love generally tend to become bad parents.
One might fall their experiences of love to be falling under all three categories. The categories only point towards the pillars of the feeling or the bond. The most important features which are MOST INTEGRAL, the ones the couple considers the strength and the bond of the relationships.

Gist

Love is real when it is the priority
It becomes an illusion when it takes a back seat.

I AM ONLY BEGINNING TO RESEARCH ON THE TOPIC. THIS IS MORE OF ONLY SELF TALK. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO QUESTION EVERYTHING I HAVE JUST SAID. THIS IS ONLY AN OUTLINE OF ALL PUZZLES THAT I HAVE MYSELF ENCOUNTERED.