爱不是什么

Love is not what the movies and hit songs tell us it is.

Love doesn’t hurt. If it hurts it’s something else. Fear. Attachment. Idolatry. Addiction. Possessiveness.

Nobody’s heart aches out of love. In pop culture, love gets conflated with desire all the time. From childhood we learn you can like something, or you can love it, as if it’s only different degrees of the same thing.

Love is all selflessness. It’s the opposite of need and attachment. To an individual it’s a sensation of allowing, rather than seeking. Letting go, rather than grasping.

Love is subtle and silent and delicate, and in its beginnings it can be drowned out easily by attachment, lust and fear. Love must have space, and force is what crowds it out. Love is powerful but it isn’t forceful.

Desire is simple and often reckless. We need to manage it carefully to avoid causing harm. Desire is the intention to change something, to reject what it is in favor of what it could be — something better, more secure, more pleasing. Love is the intention to let that thing be for its own sake.

A lot of us grow up thinking that to love is simply to want very badly. It’s hard to be sensitive to love when you’re overrun by desire. Love isn’t something that can be done badly, if it’s love at all. Desire can happen at the same time as love, but it’s not the same thing.

Jealousy isn’t love, nor is it evidence of love. Jealousy is fear. Love doesn’t drive people mad, it drives them sane. Desire, in its different forms, can drive people to do anything. Love never drives people to kill or steal or cheat or worry.

Love reveals itself when you release your need to have the object of your affection, and see that there’s no reason to make it yours. That it exists at all is enough. To love something is to disappear in its favor — to  die to your own interests so that it can be what it is.

In evolutionary time, love is new, and we’re still learning to used to it. It’s a much more sophisticated human capability than desire.

Desire’s been around forever. It’s a high-horsepower engine. It’s loud. It handles poorly. It only goes the way it’s pointing. It needs a sober driver, but it makes you drunk.

Desires are personal. They’re attached to you and they end where you end. They can be no bigger than you.

Love is bigger than you. To love someone is for their happiness to be the same as your own.

And so love is the dissolution of the borders between you and me and them. Those lines are conceptual and imaginary anyway, and love gives you vision clear enough to see the world without them.

Your love can’t be reserved for one person. If you only love one person you probably don’t love anyone. Love isn’t something you can aim. The truer your love is — in other words, the less you have it confused with something else — the more generalized it becomes. To love fully is to love all.

It takes practice to give up “good for me” in the name of “good.” In the grand scale of evolutionary time, human beings are only at the beginning of experimenting with this — working with something bigger and more important than personal desire.

But love is already everywhere, at least in the background. It’s too conspicuous to be marginalized, even among a population largely driven insane by mismanaged desire. We need to learn to navigate our desires better in order to love fully. We’re working on it.

It’s an interesting time to be alive. We’re graduating from a culture of desire-driven lives to one of love-driven lives. The solution to the world’s problems will look more and more obvious as more people begin to understand that and make that transformation. The first step is knowing the difference.

Defining it is impossible. You can throw words at it but never pin it down. Nothing is misidentified more often than love. But for now, we can know what it’s not. If it hurts, it’s not love.

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爱不是什么

    电影里演的和流行歌曲里唱的并不是爱。

    爱不伤人。别的东西才伤人。比如恐惧、依恋、崇拜、沉溺和占有。

    爱不会让人心痛。在通俗文化中，爱总是与欲望被混淆在一起。从小我们就知道自己可以喜欢什么，或可以爱什么，好象喜欢和爱一样，只是程度不同。

    爱是无私的。与之对立的是需要和依恋。对一个人来说，爱是付出，而非索取；爱是放手，而非占有。

    爱是微妙的，是静默的，是纤弱的，是容易在萌芽时就被依恋、贪欲和恐惧淹没的。爱需要空间，暴力让爱无处容身。爱是强大的，但不是暴力的。

    欲望是简单而无所顾忌的。我们需要小心地管住欲望以免造成伤害。欲望是改变事情的意图，它反对事情变得更好、更安全、更使人满意。爱则让事情顺其自然。

    我们中的很多人长大后都认为爱就是非常想得到。当你满脑子只想得到的时候是无法去爱的。爱，真正的爱是不能马虎的。欲望随着爱一起生长，但两者截然不同。

    嫉妒不是爱，也不能证明爱。嫉妒是恐惧。爱不使人发疯，而使人理智。欲望呢，不同的欲望会迫使人们做出任何事情。爱永远不会让人杀戮、偷窃或忧虑。

    从需要爱恋对象的欲望中解脱出来，爱才被释放出来，你才发现占有是没有道理的。谁也不能真正占有谁。为了爱，我们甘愿离开，甚至甘愿献出生命。

    在人类的进化过程中，爱是个新生事物，我们还在学习怎样去爱。爱是一种比欲望复杂精密很多的人类的能力。

    欲望则由来已久。欲望是一部高马力的发动机，它嘈杂而难以驾御，不达目的不会罢休；它需要冷静的驾驶者，但还是会使人迷惑。

    欲望是私人的。各种欲望依附于你，与你同生共死而不能超越你。

    爱可以超越你。爱一个人，就让你爱的人和你一样幸福。

    爱让人们消除了彼此之间的隔阂，那些隔阂不过是成见和臆想。没有了隔阂，爱就使你看清了世界。

    你的爱不能只保留给一个人。如果你只爱一个人，你也许就不爱别人了。爱不是功利的，换句话说，你爱得越真，与爱混淆的杂念就越少，你的爱就越博大。爱所有的人才是真正的爱。

    为了真正的爱而放弃个人私利需要不断的实践。在人类进化的长河中，人们才刚刚开始尝试这种超越欲望而比欲望更重要的事物。

    但是爱已经无处不在了，至少在历史上已经发生过了。即使在被失控的欲望逼疯的人群中，爱也是无法被忽视的。我们需要学会控制好自己的欲望从而真正地去爱。我们正在努力。

    如今的人们正在见证一些有趣的事情。从欲望驱动的生活逐渐过渡到爱驱动的生活，这是我们正在经历的文化变迁。随着人们开始理解并投身这一变迁，解决世界性问题的办法变得越来越明朗了。办法的第一步是了解彼此的差异。

    定义爱是什么，是不可能的。无论你怎样遣词造句，都无法说清它到底是什么。没有什么事物比爱更让人们难以定义了。但是现在，我们可以知道它不是什么。如果它伤人，它就不是爱。