LOVE
“Real love, the only kind genuinely worthy of the name, is a kind of dialectical overcoming. It only becomes possible at the point where one comes to understand the full reality of one’s beloved, which necessarily, means encountering even those qualities one finds infuriating, loathsome, or detestable.
For surely, if you know enough about anyone, you will find something in them that you hate. But it’s only when one encounters that, and decides nonetheless to love them anyway, that we can talk of love as an active, redemptive, and powerful force.
Real love can only be love if it conquerors hatred, but not by annihilating but by containing and transcending it, and not just once, but forever.”
– David Graeber
I have pinned this at the top of my Facebook Page to remind me of Graeber’s words and the deeper meaning – to be a love activist. In my living and being. It is easy to preach if one is a teller, a preacher, a teacher – or a con artist. But to choose first the battle of “dialectical overcoming” is not for the faint hearted or as good spoken word.
In C.S.Lewis’s “The Four Loves” he suggests that when eros, philia or storge fail – and they will – that agape will need to be the main love word for a life in a relationship/marriage. And as a mentor of mine said to me once “I can only really love one person well Peter and that is my wife.” I am not sure he was right but in Graeber’s words, I get it. Agape is, I sugggest, the kind of love that best describes Graeger’s battle. It’s then that “…we can talk of love as an active, redemptive, and powerful force.”
There’s a bucket load to talk about that this small paragraph from David Graeber unlocks and it is a worthy few words to chew over.
Peter Breen
David Graeber
davidgraeber.institute
Peter Breen
Peteskibreen's Blog 