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Discover fulfillment and nurture it
According to him, love not only discovers the future fulfillment of the one we love, but, strictly speaking, demands it, claims it.
But it does so without fanfare or force, without harming the dignity or autonomy of the person being loved.
On the contrary, always respecting the freedom of others, love gently compels the loved one to perfect themselves, to advance towards the fullness that corresponds to them:
- He proposes his ideal of fulfillment,
- encourages him,
- It helps him improve
- and gives it the vigor and drive essential to achieving fulfillment.
And, from that point of view, rather than demanding fullness, it makes it possible and brings it about: it provokes that fullness.
Rather than demanding the fulfillment of the loved one,
love makes it possible and brings it about.
To love more and better
Therefore, when the loved one seems to stop progressing, when we have the impression that they are no longer moving forward, instead of becoming discouraged, or overcoming that discouragement, we must multiply and improve our love for them!
In doing so, we will not only discover the paths you must walk to continue moving towards the desired fulfillment, but we will also gently and effectively encourage you to direct your steps in that direction.
It is enough to want better, in a more selfless way, with more abandon, with greater dedication: many more resources are not necessary.
True love—that of two spouses who truly love each other, for example—manages to improve the other person with the sole force of affection, with hardly any need for words.
It is the very drive that love transmits that encourages the one we love to progress and guides him towards his fulfillment.
The strength transmitted by our love
helps to improve the one we love.
To see more clearly
For what reasons?
First of all, because in this way, by correcting and improving himself, the one who discovers himself to be loved also becomes aware that he is less unworthy of the love that we freely dedicate to him.
- But also, and above all, because our love is quietly, almost without uttering a word, placing before their eyes their own ideal.
- As I pointed out, when we truly love, we don’t just love what the person is, but also that final degree of fulfillment that, thanks to the affection that sharpens our intelligence, we have discovered in them: their future perfecting project.
We love our friends, our spouse, our children, in all the fullness that the unfolding of their own being is called to achieve.
But without impatience or misguided teaching methods: always counting on time, on the greatness of his person and on his good will, even if at the moment it seems dormant.
And, as Goethe already warned , by wanting them to be better than they currently are, we encourage them to advance along the path of their own self-improvement.
In this way, thanks to the affection we show him, the one we intend to perfect will achieve what he would hardly achieve on his own.
Thanks to our love,
the person we intend to help
will achieve a fulfillment they could not reach on their own.
Love gives wings to the loved one, it lifts them towards fulfillment.
This is explained, among many others, by Guitton, a philosopher who passed away some years ago, with words that are not entirely easy, but full of suggestions.
- Thus, what the moral ideal obliges us to accomplish, namely, that “second being” superior to ourselves who is our model, love allows us to obtain willingly, very willingly.
And, a little further on, he explains that what one cannot achieve on their own becomes possible thanks to the love given to us by those who truly love us. A love that, from this point of view, can be described as creative :
- It is as difficult to equal oneself, by oneself, with a self that is above oneself, as it is easy to become similar to that model of oneself when it is projected onto oneself by the being who loves us.
- In both cases there is a kind of illusion, since an image of something that does not yet exist is proposed.
- But, when this image comes from the love of another being, it has a creative power.
- That is why each of us acts, accomplishes, and even exists in proportion to what the one who loves us believes we are capable of .
Immediately, add a formula packed with practical effects:
- The secret of education is to imagine [and want, I would add] each being a little better than they actually are.
And she explains it, conveniently:
- What am I, then, but what those who love me think of me?
- When consciousness closes in on itself, it dries up and becomes tormented, and when it opens to love it frees itself from its inner chains.
- But consciousness only opens when it welcomes love; thus, in the circuit of love, the response contains more than the demand, and the gift received contains more than the gift given.
The secret of education is to love the one we love
a little better than they are.
In a very different context, with magnificent feminine intuition, Philine, Amiel ‘s lover , expressed it in the letter with which she responded to a probable reprimand from him:
- My inequalities will disappear as soon as I’m by your side forever. With you I will improve, I will perfect myself, without limits; because by your side satiety and disunity will be inconceivable.
- You won’t know my true worth until I can be, with you, all that I am.
Together with you,
thanks to the abundant energies of your love!
2. With concrete manifestations
The consequences of what I have been suggesting are abundant.
I’ll point out a few.
To feel unworthy of the love they show me, in order to reach the fullness of happiness
Free of charge…
The first is feeling unworthy of the love that is given to one, for example, in married life.
I gladly acknowledge that one of the things that has most moved me throughout my experience as a husband, and in my prolonged interaction with various married couples, is how often one spouse says to the other:
- I love you madly, immensely, and I don’t understand, when I look inside myself, how you can love me.
And the spouse’s response is to turn the sentence around:
- No, I’m the one who’s excited about you, and, knowing me, I find it impossible to believe that you’ve chosen me as your husband or wife.
Some will consider all this cheap romanticism, and that’s what someone told me many years ago, at the end of a conference, concluding their speech by saying:
- I know very well the qualities I have, and the reasons why my wife has fallen in love with me!
And the fullness of happiness
I admit that his intervention filled me with immense sadness. Why? Because that good man was missing out on the most rewarding aspect of love, which is precisely the undeniable feeling that we don’t deserve it.
Well, as Étienne Rey argues in his Peau Neuve , to fully enjoy happiness, there is nothing like feeling unworthy of it.
And Marta Brancatisano exemplifies this, giving life and plasticity to the same idea:
- Being loved when we are heroes or top of the class doesn’t even bring us much satisfaction; but being loved when we are and behave like worms… ah, this is something that stirs the very core of the world, something that provokes a stupor capable of giving new life to whoever receives such love.
To truly savor happiness,
there’s nothing like feeling unworthy of it.
To seek the fulfillment that is ours, out of love.
The inherent fullness of each human being
Another unavoidable effect of love also has much to do with personal development and growth, with the search for the fulfillment that is rightfully ours.
Regardless of age, social status, health condition, etc., when someone truly falls in love, and discovers that their feelings are reciprocated, they inevitably formulate—at least implicitly—a goal of self-improvement, to become less unworthy of the love they are given.
That is why, when we hear the sad statement about someone that “they have been nothing in life”, we can be sure that no one has truly loved them (or, at least, that they have never been aware of that love).
Consequence of knowing they are loved
This is undoubtedly the meaning behind this statement by Gautier:
- Nothing contributes so much to making a man bad as not being loved.
And, most likely, the one that could be assigned to the following statements by Niemeyer:
- Love begets love, and even harsh nature cannot always withstand its power.
- If many more men had found more love in their childhood and youth, they would have become more humane.
In accordance with these last words, the fulfillment that belongs to each of us, the result and effectiveness of our own formation, is so often the fruit of the awareness of being loved and esteemed, and of the unwavering trust that the one who loves us unconditionally makes arise in us.
Knowing we are loved is the best incentive to develop ourselves,
to effectively seek our improvement,
until we reach the fullness that is our own.
Reaching fulfillment
1. The effort of one’s own delivery
The fullness of the beloved
The search for fulfillment, sometimes painful
Corroboration within oneself, a demand for fulfillment, the discovery of a perfection that one does not perceive within oneself, yearnings for improvement…
The poet has said it much better, in what I still consider the most enlightened love song in Spanish of the entire 20th century, La voz a ti debida , by Pedro Salinas:
Forgive me for searching for you like this, / so clumsily, inside / you. / Forgive me the pain, sometimes. / It’s just that I want to draw out / your best self. / The one you didn’t see, but that I see, / swimming through your depths, so precious. / And to grasp it / and hold it high, like the tree holds / the last light / it has found from the sun. / And then you / would come in search of it, to the heights. / To reach it / perched upon yourself, as I love you, / now only touching your past / with the rosy tips of your toes, / your whole body tense, now ascending / from yourself to yourself. / And then let the new creature that you were / answer my love.
The final verse, with the verb in the past tense, represents the culmination of this inspired composition. Salinas affirms here that the personal development of every human being is precisely that: unfolding, development. And, therefore, that, in a certain way, the fullness he longs for was contained within him, from the very moment of his creation (that you were ).
Our task is to discover, to help perceive and unravel that richness until, at the end of life, we reach that fullness that, to a certain extent, each one already was from the beginning.
Fulfillment, always a consequence of love
And, to achieve this, the love of others is absolutely necessary.
These words of Tolstoy suggest it , somewhat rough in expression, but they wonderfully manifest all the redemptive and formative power of authentic love:
- In Nekhlyudov, as in all men, there were two natures. One, the spiritual, which sought only the good that was also good for his fellow men; and the other, the animal, which sought only the good for itself and was willing to sacrifice the good of the whole world for the sake of this good.
- In this period of his madness of selfishness, brought on by military and Petersburg life, his animal nature reigned supreme and his spiritual nature was completely repressed.
- But upon seeing Katiusha and feeling again what she had experienced in other times, the spiritual nature raised its head and once again began to claim its rights.
- During the two days preceding Easter, an internal struggle of which he was unaware developed within him.
Gregorio Marañón also explains it acutely, and perhaps more directly, provided that what he says about women also applies to men:
- Amiel was unaware that the ideal woman is almost never found in that state of perfection: because, generally, she is not only the work of chance, but, to a large extent, the work of one’s own creation […].
- The feminine ideal, like all other ideals, is never given to us ready-made; it must be built; with suitable clay, of course, but the essential thing is to build it with the love and sacrifice of every day, exposing for it, in a risky game, heads or tails, the future of one’s own heart.
The ideal woman or man is never given to us ready-made:
we have to build them with love and sacrifice every day.
2. Fullness, unique and unrepeatable, like the person
Its strict singularity
A particular, unique fullness
Having arrived at this point, it is worth emphasizing one aspect, which I have referred to only indirectly until now.
It seems undeniable that love is the driving force behind all education, any attempt to help others, and any training process, both personal and for others.
But it is necessary to consider again that, precisely because they are people, each one is unique. Hence, their fulfillment, even while sharing some similarities with that of others, is also strictly singular and unrepeatable: unique.
Therefore, what we must always strive for through love is that the person we love reaches their full potential:
- His, truly different from that of any other human individual among those who exist, have existed, or will exist…
- and also from our own.
Their own fullness,
distinct from that of any other person
and also from ours.
The fullness of the other “as other”
Aristotle already hinted at this when he defined love as “wanting the good of the other as other .”
And this is eloquently underscored by the words Unamuno addressed to a novice writer, who complained to the master that his work was not sufficiently recognized.
Don Miguel replied:
- Don’t think you’re more, less, or the same as anyone else; we men are not just quantities.
- Each person is unique and irreplaceable; make it your main focus to be so consciously.
No more, no less, and no equal to any other:
we men are not just quantities.
Respect for the fullness that belongs to the loved one
Julián Marías also points this out, although with somewhat more complex expressions. Whoever loves must let the beloved be who they are meant to be, not someone else. They must also allow time:
- In its temporal reality, throughout life […], love consists primarily in letting be. […]
- The one who loves needs the loved one so much that he has to let them be what they are, what they have to continue being.
In conclusion, summarizing in a few sentences the points we have already covered:
- The only thing you can actively do about her is to stimulate the birth of what is most her own and best, to help her discover herself, to see herself as in a mirror offered by the one who sees her.
- He who wants to transform the loved one—such a frequent mistake—does not truly love her, since this leads to wanting her to be as much herself as possible, and therefore he limits himself to trying to strip her of artificial attachments, to leave her reality free, not to change it for his own or for the one he personally prefers.
The one who loves encourages the beloved person
to be fully what they are
and to conquer what they must become: their fullness.
Love is the main driving force
behind personal development,
the search for and conquest of fulfillment.
(To be continued)
Tomás Melendo,
President of Edufamilia
http://www.edufamilia.com
[email protected]
