Love: Virtue and Emotion

Dave receives a call from Mikhail after a very long time. Mikhail apologizes for not having called. Dave writes to him later saying that he needn’t feel sorry and making ‘calling’ a chore. That way, says Dave, his relationship with Mikhail would become monotonous. He can call when he feels like.

Mikhail says nothing. After many days Dave receives a reply. Mikhail writes back.

Dave, I have been thinking of what you said about just calling when I feel like and not making my calls a chore lest our relationship turn monotonous. But Love is responsibility. When you leave a person to his ‘feeling’, he becomes no different from an animal. He Sleeps when he ‘feels’ like, reads when he ‘feels’ like, eat when he is ‘hungry’ as much as he ‘feels’ like. You get the point?

Feelings have their own place-to motivate what you strongly believe not to believe what you strongly feel. What you do is what you believe. I believe in love and hence I need feelings to motivate love. if I leave myself to feelings, I would love only when I feel conducive to the same. But feelings are like the wind, they come and go. They tear us apart often and often leave us enthusiastic. Our beliefs such as love cannot be contingent on something as momentary and unpredictable as feeling. Love is much more noble to fall prey to feelings.

It is good to love, such a maxim subsides in reason. Reason should incline our feelings to our beliefs so that we may act according to our beliefs. If reason fails to do that and our passions[bodily desires] incline our beliefs to our feelings, we would act one day, not act another, act less one day, become radical another. We would be a victim of our feelings acting a saint one day, a sinner another.


Love makes you feel accountable. Feelings make you rely on your moods and swings. Monotony is not in itself morbid. When monotonous activity is done with purpose, it is called consistency, a discipline, a relationship. It is monotonous in its nature, not in its purpose.

Too much Love will kill you?

Mikhail and Dave are watching Romeo and Juliet. They exit the audio-visual room and say in union, “riveting! Simply brilliant” As they move past the cafeteria with their ice creams, Dave says, “You know Mikhail. Love is all good and nice and worth fighting for. But too much of anything is bad. So also, we shouldn’t love anything too much. Too much of love is also bad for any attachment to anything in excess is bad.

And Mikhail simply believes in enjoying his ice-cream, Dave wonders why Mikhail in his signature style is not pouncing on him with arguments and building a case. He throws the candy stick in the dustbin as if throwing a ball in the hoop and says,

“Love frees men. It does not enslave but liberate. When man is attached to something, he is not attached to it because he loves but because the object of his attachment, say football, Television, women, cars, money even books, enslaves him through his passions [emotions].

Joe watches a movie when he is supposed to do his homework and excuses himself saying the movie is a classic and that he only loves cinema and is homework is left undone. Anna is late for the Girls Scout meeting as she cannot make up her mind what dress to wear and says she was only trying to dress appropriately. All these remain our attachments and yet we confuse them with Love.

Love frees us from our attachments. It opens our eyes to the world outside of us and our attachments to the world inside of us are tempered. Love subsides in reason. But often we say we are only trying to love a game or food or driving and put off work that is not the fault of another who has suffered or our virtue that has been injured for reason has not prevailed. Love does not control. It does not fight for one’s own pleasure over another’s need.

Only if u have more love someone more than you have for yourself would you think: the movie is not so important or alright, so I will miss 30 minutes. It’s alright. The ground has not been pulled from below me.

Thus, love has drawn you away from the slavery of your passions. Thus, too much love frees us where as too much attachment to one thing clouds our reasoning and impedes the love we could otherwise show. Yes, too much attachment to anything is bad if not discerned with counsel. But too much love is required for the discernment and the liberation from the world within to the world without.

Irony of Christianity

Christianity is a strange thing, an encounter of life with life. An encounter of man with Man. An encounter of man with a man who is God. Christianity makes for a strange paradox. It makes me believe that I am a treasure for it calls me a son of God if I wish to be living in obedience and surrender to the Father's will. I have the privilege of sharing his son ship and I am a treasure. Christianity also makes me aware what a wreck and refuse I am. As I am nothing unto myself and all that I am, is through God and of God. I need God's mercy to touch my life that He chooses to share the divine magic of His life with the ordinary apathy of my human life. I am a wreck and yet a treasure. Nothing is mine and yet in humility, everything is.