Could you live alone?

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How old you are then, Shura?

 

I wasn't going to reply to this, since my views of love have gotten me in a lot of trouble recently, but....I could not live without love. I could not be alone. Well, scratch that. I could live without romantic love, though I would not be a happy camper. I love being in love, as far as that goes. But if I had the love of my children? Then I could spend the rest of my days without a significant other, and only be occasionally mildly irritated. But if I didn't have my kids, and I didn't have that source of affection, I would wither up and die. I am, by nature, an emotional person, and I have to have an outlet for that in some way shape or form. So no, I could not live alone. I could not be without love.

 

Aristotle said that one would have to be either a god or a rock to live alone.

 

What if you're a Rock God?

Teh God of Rocks?

 

Then you can rock all day and night, baby!!



Sorry for being off topic. Couldn't resist that inane remark.

 

Okay, i'm taking a gap year from uni to work. I share a house with 3 others. For a month over the summer they weren't in the house coz they went back to their respective family's homes. During this time i was single, living on my own, the only company being my pc (probably about this time i soloed BG1). None of my mates were about either coz they had gone back 'home' also.
During this time, the only people i saw were the people at work.

Lets just say that i learnt that friends are most important to me. But, not to say that i could live my life with just friends. Seeing my friends in happy relationships annoys me as well coz every chick i get a date with turns out to be wierd.

Oh well, an easy way to get in a glum mood = post a life/emotion based thread.

 

In my case the question is a little different: can you live together ? The answer is no. I've lived together with two different girls in the past, the first lasted 6 years, the second 1. I feel locked up after a while. I now live alone for 10 years, and i wouldn't wanna have it any other way. I still have my relationships, but when dawn comes, they have to go.

 

I wouldnt want to live alone, though I think it would be possible. I am pretty much a loner but as I have grown older I have noticed the absence of someone to really care for in more than a friendship like way. But at the same time I cant really imagine myself spending alot of time with one person for a long time. I am very much a loner and treasure solitude, living with another person should get on my nerves after awhile. But there is only one way to find out and it is to try it.

[ January 20, 2003, 17:21: Message edited by: joacqin ]

 

Mostly the question is what is better: Being alone or knowingly consorting with a wrong (or just not 'that') person. Pride battles desire for comfort.

 

I beg to disagree, Foradasthar. Love does not have to be proven to exist. I have trouble understanding why you would insist that, actually. I do agree that love is impossible to prove, particularly as there is no cut and dried definition for the term anyway. But it's hardly different for any other emotion.

Maybe it would help if I turned things around a bit. You said that love cannot be proven because you can never know until "after" the end whether it was truly lasting or not. Then you go on to say that you cannot ever fully trust a person -- but how can you know that until the end comes? Emotions are ever-changing things, and no one can foresee the future of them.

To me, though, love goes beyond emotion. Affection is the emotion that draws two people together, but love is the cement that bonds them. What it really amounts to is basically that person's welfare is more important to you than your own. Love is no logical thing (nor affection, for that matter) and cannot be circumscribed by factual or experiential boundaries, nor confined to convenient little compartments and there analyzed and broken down into its individual elements. It just is, and defies explanation.

 

What was the use of that post? For as long as you can't prove love, know love for sure even with your feelings even if there was no "material" proof of it, then love = deep affection. For those two cannot be told apart from each other. And as affection can lessen and break, so can love for they are the same thing. And that "love" which can so easily lessen and break is no love. Why would mere affection deserve such a title as "love" for no special reason, other than sounding something more important?

 

Love == also known as 'Boing' == a form of obsessive compulsive disorder.

OCD? I can't get enough of it!

 

There is nothing wrong with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, how is it related to love?

 

All right, I'll try again and make a distinction. I think the essential difference between love and deep affection is that affection is still at heart selfish. You can have affection for someone and yet it is because it makes *you* feel better. On the other hand, love is selfless (as per my definition above). In fact, you can love someone that you have never met. Christ commanded His disciples to love their enemies. Now it may not be possible to ever have a deep affection for someone who hates you and tries to destroy you at every opportunity, but you CAN love them. Not many who do that, unfortunately, but it is possible -- and part of what separates true Christians from those who just call themselves such.

 

Even still you can't at any point say wether you "love" or feel affection for someone. And who's to say when you "love" your enemies, you don't actually just fool yourself into thinking so, because in the end you feel better when you do? You see, I don't believe in altruism. As I believe in all things natural, in science, I also believe in the ultimate simplicity of things. What system of survival for the species could be more simple, yet result in so many different variation and results? Altruism is a utopistic dream. No man is ever capable of thinking the good of another over his own. What form this good for himself takes, wether material or spiritual, is another thing.

A philosophical debate, where this is getting. And there's no point to continuing this as obviously there's no result to be had.

As far as love is still concerned, you're obviously referring to different types of love. For to claim that any person could ever love an enemy the same way they would love their loved one, is absurd. And I've never heard of a relationship where no proof of mere affection was apparent. Let's say you lose a loved one after they've been suffering long from a disease. Or in an accident. What need is there to cry? For as a christian, you know that she's now going to get into a world far better than the one you are in. Or if she goes to hell, well she won't be helped with your tears one bit. Or heck, even if you weren't a christian (or a religious person in general), she'd just be plain dead and know nothing of what you do anyway. What other purpose is there to grief and cry over a dead or injured loved one, in any situation of life, if not because YOU are wounded in it. YOU lose something. Affection is always involved. Even in "love", should it exist. And yet again, affection can ALWAYS break.

And please, give me an explanation over this "that's what separates a true christian over.." thing you said. For as far as I understand, many such things that Christ told were simply to show that those are things that He, and God, can do. But that it is impossible for any human to live according to such rules. That's where mercy and forgiveness comes along. You're going way out of your line to the holier-than-thou, better than anyone else direction. So much for the true christian humble attitude I guess..?

[ January 22, 2003, 09:14: Message edited by: Foradasthar ]

 

I can. I've done so for the biggest part of my 20 years of living. But it would be a long, hard and painfull road.

 

All right. I'll have to agree one thing: there's no point in continuing about love when you don't even accept the idea of altruism. So I'll give over.

But I thought I'd go ahead and answer the last remark. Sorry if I came across as self-righteous; I forget that there's a lot of versions of Christianity out there. The truth of it though goes far beyond mercy and forgiveness. So many folks think "salvation" means that you can sin however you want and since you've got forgiveness, you're ok. But that's not the gospel message. Jesus doesn't stop with forgiving you; He wants to cleanse you and then take His place inside you. From that point on, it's not so much you living and loving -- it's Him: you're submitted to His leadership and do only as He wills. Admittedly, not such a popular teaching, and hence mainstream Christianity focuses on God's love to you and His mercy and forgiveness and pretty much glosses the rest. But anyway, that pretty much takes me out of it, and so even when I do love my enemies and do good to people who hate me, I can hardly be proud about it. It wasn't me doing it, it was Christ in me.

 

Granted, I actually neglected to think about it that way at all. Now I'm a bit more enlightened than I was yesterday. I can see your side of the story and respect it then. A shame that this thread has been so silent save for our small debate, though.

 

A small story to break up the religious debate:

When I moved into my first post-college apartment, I enjoyed being on my own. After a while, though, I found myself spending just enough time there to eat, sleep and dress. Although it was my personal space, I wasn't comfortable there and I was always looking for excuses to be somewhere else. Then I got two kittens, and having them run to greet me when I opened the door was a great feeling. Suddenly, the place was mine again.

I, for one, definitely CANNOT live alone!

 

No. I honestly don't think I could live my life without love. While loneliness is not an issue, as in a sense I am very alone. No single person knows all that much about me. This is mostly out of a sense of, for lack of a better word, fear. My immediate family is the only group of people (other than those of you here, at SP, who know next-to-nothing about me) who know about my intense interest in "fantasy" genre books, games and writing. My little brother is the only person who knows I'm trying to write a long-story, almost every chance I get. But then, no one in my immediate family knows what I'm like, or who I am, with my friends. My friends know me as more of a jock/dork with no social life. And then, to different groups of friends I act differently, so that no one has a complete picture of who I am.
I guess what I'm trying to say, is that I can't live my whole life like this. I *have* to let someone in, sooner or later, or I'll go insane. And, since I can't imagine myself letting someone in who I don't love, romantically or as a very close friend, therefore I don't think it would be possible for me to go on for my entire life like this without love. Thus, I sincerely believe - hope - that love is a necessary part of a complete life.

PS-Sorry if this post is somewhat off topic, but I had to express some of my thoughts in words.