Daily Times

I love you

but because

inexplicably

I love in you

something more

than you

I mutilate you – Jacque Lacan

When it comes to love, what comes to people’s mind, is a girl friend and a boy friend talking with each other perhaps sometimes titillating each other to glean pleasure.

But it is more than that. Freud time and again insists that psychoanalysis has to make you a better person both ethically and socially. Love is one amongst many things which in psychoanalysis helps you to make you a better person. But love itself is a very ambiguous subject of psychoanalysis. It is mercurial so much so that it slides away when you try to understand what in effect it is? But I’ll try to understand this in Alain Badiou’e book in the praise of love’s analysis.

“What kind of world does one see when one experiences it from the point of view of two and not one? What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of difference and not identity? That is what I believe love to be.” Alain Badiou writes in his book, In praise of love. I have written several pieces on love but over the past few months my entire viewpoint has changed.

Most people think that to love is to be loved. Badiou as well agrees with this maxim and writes his book on it that we need to live life from the point of view of difference. We need to live with someone who would see things differently yet with a familiarity. World, people, and most importantly life would start looking magnificent and greatly beautiful when seen from difference.

Modern humans have taken love for granted and have confused it with carnal pleasure. Love is more than carnal pleasure. It, however, is an entire perspective of life. You get a different view, taste, and idea of the world where innocence, munificence and care become dominant themes of your life. We need to know that loving someone is being human at its utmost.

The best and foremost thing about love is that love quashes your ego. Ego has destroyed humanity. Each and every action is seen from an egoistic perspective. The domineering ”I” is so disturbing that it wants nothing except its unsolicited domination. But love is the precise point where ego subsides and opens space for two people to see things from different yet familiar perspectives.

Badiou further writes, ” To love is to struggle, beyond solitude, with everything in the world that can animate existence. This world where I see for myself the fount of happiness my being with someone else brings. “I love you” becomes: in this world where there is the fount you are for my life. In the water from this fountain, I see our bliss, yours first.” Your entire existence gets animated and gets shivers, something wakes it up from the slumber. From loving yourself you begin to love someone else and this brings numerous opportunities to live life in color.

Aalain Badiou writes that love is some sort of adventure of an individual and entails lots of risks and these risks make love very beautiful. Badiou asks such questions that what kind of a world would we see, live and experience when we see, live, and experience it from the point of view of two not one. He writes,” love is a quest for truth.” Love brings truth for people engaged in it. But these truths are very subjective and personal, these truths foster growth and humanness. You simply become a very gentle, caring, and lovely man or woman when you fall in love.

Socrates rightly had rightly said, ” Anyone who doesn’t take love as their starting-point will never discover what philosophy is about.” Love shakes something inside you. It should be noted that here this love is of two human beings. And not of any other animal or thing. But of two complete consciousnesses. Humans need to quash their egos to let love thrive and bring happiness.

Badio writes that love is the epitome of friendship. In love all positive aspects of friendship could be seen, ” All of it, everything. All of you. You. Your heart, your soul, your mind, your body.” Interesting point is that these all aspects of friendship and love when coalesce create an intimacy of different levels.

Furthermore, Badiou in his book charts many stages of love such as encounter, difference, two scenes, truth procedure and construction. What interests us is that in love construction is the most important stage after the encounter. First you encounter your beloved and then a prudent procedure of construction ensues. You work, let it thrive and develop to touch the highest possible states. Love is not just the meeting of two people. It is however a construction: construction of a meaningful and prosperous life.

Per Badiou love apart from being an encounter is a perpetual construction of a number of things. You develop a number of skills, flairs, some other sorts of prowess. Things that separate love from friendship is that it encompasses what friendship misses. The feeling which, as Badiou notes, the sensation of love affords to two human beings is unparalleled.

It is propitious to note that love is more than its signifiers show. Over the past few months I have a phrase which is my own substitution for love: mutual understanding of life. For me, this precise phrase captures the minscule subtleties and niceties of love. It is better to say that we have a mutual understanding of life than say we are in love.

Essentially love is a very dulcet word. This word feels you something very gentle and refined. There is no stress to change this word. The only qualm is that how egregiously love is associated with attachment and several other affections a person undergoes in his or her life. We need to know that love is risky. Badiou writes that love without risk is war without deaths. And for loving someone truly a person can engage in any kind of perilous activities. But I don’t second any activity which would be deleterious and hurtful to others.

In this world of aggression, animosity and perpetual dread, what we need is love, care and respect. A girl is not an object. Neither a boy is a robot. Relationships between a girl and a boy should be seamless and dulcet.

The writer is a student, based in Turbat. He Tweets at @shahabakram6 and can be reached at shahabakram0852@gmail.com