My lovely silkworm friend Rachel(as i call her fondly) made a special request for me to blog about love today. Not ANY love, nooo not any old love. Unconditional love!
*falling off chair, stumped by the magnitude of this topic*
ok, i'll try... here goes. *wink wink*
When we were all students staying in the student hostel back in 1993, lovely rachel was pursued by this boy we nicknamed 'Egg Guy'. Rachel reminded me during our online chat today that he was given this special name cos he borrowed an egg from us in the kitchen one day (and b****y did not return it dammit!!!)
But... unconditional love.... as we know it in everyday life, mainly pertains to the love a parent has for his/her child. So i thought about Egg Guy, and how maybe he is happily married by now with happy little egg children!
goosebumps yet, rachel? :P
Jokes aside, hmmm. In counselling there is a concept that shrinks need to follow called 'unconditional positive regard'. Basically, it means not imposing your own personal values onto your client, even though he may be a mass murderer! rachel and i agreed that this kind of positive regard is similar to the unconditional love a parent has for his/her child.
That got me to think about other kinds of love. ah.... lovelorn me! but again, that aside, I got to thinking about what i described to Rachel as God-given values and human values. the relationship this has to love? Rachel and i agreed that, regardless of one's faith, in a man/woman relationship, a God-given (or universal, if you like) value is that the man, because he is made physically stronger, is meant to protect the woman. and the woman, because the universe/God made her softer and more in touch with her emotions, is meant to be in a supporting/submissive role to the man, substituting her emotional strength what she does not have in physical strength. What about human made values then? well one could say they include all the other rubbish that unreasonable couples expect of each other in order to have a 'happy relationship.' like, for eg, the man must make good money, the woman must wear Chanel, the kids must go to selective schools and become doctors and lawyers, etc etc etc.
But what ABOUT unconditional love then? my interpretation of that is that we owe ourselves the God/universe-given value of loving ourselves unconditionally. simple and sweet. if our interactions with others are a reflection of what we truly are and truly feel (which indeed it is), then for us to show others unconditional love would mean that we need to reflect our own unconditional love to ourselves. to me, without one, the other cannot manifest. trust me, i have seen one too many self-loathing parent who hates their life who proclaim that they 'love' their child and push them to do all sorts of crazy feats like... becoming a doctor or a lawyer. it is sort of like, erm... without the egg, there will be no chicken, and vice versa.
I ended our conversation by teasing lovely silkworm rachel about the bouquet of flowers which the infatuated Egg Guy gave her once. From memory, it had given her major goose bumps, and it did again when i brought it up after more than 15 years!
My teaseful suggestion to rachel prompted her to say goodbye and log off from the chat... because she had said that she hated those flowers, and that she thinks guys who give flowers to girls are so cliched anyway, i suggested that what if... guys giving girls flowers is also a God-given value? because, face it, most girls swoon for flowers? which would mean that she was not in tune with God-values???
*Rachel is now offline*
Adieu my God-given blog fans!!!
"An egg in a second, goosebumps for a lifetime"
~emo-me~
Ah ... a topic close to my heart, and about the people i love too (no, not Egg Guy ... that wasn't what I meant)!
ReplyDeleteYou know, dunno if I'm following your train of thought correctly ping, but in my view, a parent's unconditional love for her child is more "difficult" than probably a psychologist's unconditional positive regard (without wanting to take anything away from the important, high-value work pschs do) ... because aside from all the loving we must do, we must also guide the child to do what is "right" (ie, morally guide the child), and so, the responsibility is pretty huge. In this regard we cannot stay impartial. We kinda have to "impose" to a certain extent what we regard as good values on the child, otherwise there won't be a learning process. So to me, that two kinds of "love" aren't quite the same. Maybe that's why some parents push their kids in certian directions - they think it's the best for them. But of course, there are nasty show-off parents too so hmm.