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Wanting-wanting: a love that grows
Wanting-wanting, love beyond feelings
Taking into account what was stated in the preceding article, and considering the will-to-will, which I will discuss very soon, it is possible to speak of three steps in love, or three degrees and ways of loving, which tend to be included in the next one and allow us to better understand the nature of love as a whole.
1. Love is not a passion or a feeling
The first step is rather negative: discard what is not love.
Love is not a simple passion or a mere feeling or sensation.
It is not a sensitive affection or an emotion, nor a more or less complex set of affections, emotions or feelings.
Essentially and radically,
love is not a passion or a feeling.
2. “Good love” includes feelings
But, even though it is not fundamentally or essentially a feeling, nor the union of several of them, in no case does it have to exclude them.
On the contrary, human love is only complete—which I call “good love” here—when the act of will is accompanied and enriched by the relevant emotions:
- Tenderness and gentleness when dealing with children.
- Compassion for those going through a difficult time.
- The joy of seeing our spouse, children, siblings, and friends enjoying themselves.
- Sadness, when we realize that what they are doing or what is happening to them is seriously harming them…
Therefore, subjecting emotions to intelligence and will does not always mean postponing, curtailing, or silencing feelings. Rather, in many cases, it will be necessary to foster them, make them emerge or grow, take root more firmly, and enrich them with new nuances…
For example, there will be:
- Trying to feel compassion for those who suffer, even if at first we are indifferent.
- To rejoice in the triumphs of our friends, even when initially, in some cases, they awaken rather envy in us.
- Be kind to those we deal with, strive to connect with all of them, regardless of whether we like them or not.
- To feel tenderness towards a physical deformity or a bad wound, which instinctively produce in us rather disgust and rejection…
To approach its fullness, human love
must be completed through appropriate feelings.
3. True love moderates feelings (it increases or decreases them)
In other words, one must always moderate their feelings.
But moderating them does not mean reducing them, much less repressing them. It means giving them the measure, the arrangement, and the order most appropriate for the fullness of love, for what we are calling “good love.”
And quite often, rather than suppressing them, good love is achieved by arousing, rooting, magnifying, and enriching feelings or emotions.
This is how Wadell explains it :
- If emotions are too strong, they make us violent, and it is necessary to reduce and mitigate them.
- If they are too weak, they make us indolent and depressed, and it is necessary to make them grow and stimulate them.
- Temperance does not silence emotions, but rather channels them in the service of virtue, seeking emotional balance in our actions:
- A feeling that is too weak paralyzes us, because it leaves us impassive;
- Excessive emotion hurts us because it makes us vehement.
If emotions are too strong,
they need to be reduced and mitigated;
if they are too weak,
they need to be nurtured and stimulated .
Something that —as Lewis states— should also be applied to the education of our children and students and to our own development:
- For every student [for every child, we could also say] who needs to be protected from a fragile excess of sensitivity, there are three who need to be awakened from the lethargy of cold mediocrity.
- The goal of the modern educator is not to cut down forests, but to irrigate deserts.
- The correct precaution against sentimentality is to instill appropriate feelings.
The goal of the modern educator
is not to cut down forests,
but to irrigate deserts.
Wanting-wanting, voluntary and free love
1. A firm decision of the will
The second step in our understanding of love will consist of remembering and highlighting its character as an eminently active act .
- It’s not something that happens to us or that we go through.
- It is an act or action that we freely exercise through our will , even though it may sometimes be difficult for us.
Love is a firm determination of the will. Or, to be more precise, a self-determination of that same will, with all the self-mastery that entails.
Elisabeth Lukas aptly expresses this in two well-defined moments.
A) Above all, it manifests the affirmative nature of love and the elevation it brings. It is a yes to the beloved, which exalts them and exalts us, liberates them and liberates us…
- …love is not a pure feeling. Not even a feeling of dependence or blind servitude arising from the depths of a sick soul.
- True love knows nothing of the supposed weakness of self-esteem, nor the corresponding desire to lean on someone strong, nor is it characteristic of using or abusing another person for selfish purposes. True love does not seek a protective or stimulating partner, it does not want children to show off for personal gain, nor does it crave praise or tenderness for self-gratification.
- Love requires absolutely nothing, it is sovereign, because the matter of which it is made is the modest and unconditional yes to the beloved person , like a shooting star that is launched from the fireworks of Creation.
- Love is, as a German operetta says, a heavenly power .
B) Later, he emphasizes the enormous vigor of good love; the almost omnipotence already suggested at the end of the previous paragraph, when referring to a celestial power :
- For all these reasons, he is capable of doing whatever is necessary: letting the other person be, letting them go, not holding them back, with tears in his eyes if necessary, but with sincere affection.
- Time passes and love remains; feelings fade and love remains; death undoes commitments and love remains.
- How could an unconditional yes become a no when conditions change, when the other person takes a different path, gets sick, or dies?
- That fundamental part of the mutual relationship that was love survives even the end of the relationship.
Although
it usually needs feelings and emotions to reach its fullness,
human love is not a feeling or an emotion,
but the quintessential act of the will .
2. Powered by one’s own will
Wanting-wanting
Finally, true and genuine love has the ability to intensify itself, through wanting-wanting, capable of releasing almost infinite energies.
We all have experience with that “wanting to want” feeling, even if we haven’t noticed it or can’t quite explain what it consists of. Sometimes we call it striving, persisting, being stubborn, obstinate, or trying again… Or even obsessing, but in the best sense of the word, without the slightest hint of psychological distress.
- To want… to want?
- Yes: to want… to want!
It is, so to speak, a turning of the will upon its own act: a return of the will upon the will itself, to originate, precisely, a will-willing, a new endeavor to will.
Something we do, more or less spontaneously, when a first act of wanting is not enough for the purpose we intend: to love our spouse in a moment of crisis or, above all, and hopefully this will be the norm, to further increase mutual affection in the stages of greater understanding, exaltation and joy.
(Also, and above all, therefore, when I am consciously loving well and enjoying my love. Not only, nor primarily, when I am unable to love and strive to achieve it. Although, perhaps, in these latter cases my activity is more evident, by contrast.)
To end… wanting more deeply and more truly!
In any case, what matters is realizing that, by reflecting on oneself, by truly wanting, the will strengthens and increases its capacity to love. That is to say, it ultimately achieves its intended goal, amplifying the strength and quality of its love.
And, to achieve this, it usually employs other mechanisms as well:
- Recreating the magical moments spent together.
- Paying attention to the most pleasant aspects of the person we once loved madly, and today only in a relative way or in a way that seems insufficient to us.
- The remembrance and the forging of common projects, whether already completed or still unpublished…
Above all, when experiencing the greatest loves,
the will feels inclined
to intensify and redouble its love,
to want-want.
3. And raised to infinity
The reiteration of wanting-wanting
But it doesn’t end there. The possibility of redoubling desire is not just one, but can be multiplied indefinitely.
- Or, to put it more clearly, besides wanting-wanting, it’s also possible to want-want-want, and want-want-want-want…
- And so, gradually, until the desired goal is reached.
One could speak, then, of an almost inexhaustible production of forces. Hence, this will-to-will can be conceived as the most powerful weapon that the human person possesses when it comes to acting, growing, and developing as a person.
A weapon worth learning to use, especially in those moments when love is at its fullest and most fulfilling.
The joy and delight of loving should serve as an incentive for us to love even more, in that very moment, and prepare us to love, with or without effort, in the various situations of the future :
- And, from this last point of view, the first act of wanting-wanting consists, precisely, in deciding to make love last, with absolute independence from the circumstances that the lover and the loved person will go through.
- What we do in marriage, at the moment of getting married: we commit to love each other in the future as well, regardless of the conditions that mark and determine that future.
- Love is only authentic when it’s forever!
The most powerful weapon available to human beings
is the will-will.
Free and not always strenuous
To conclude this first description of love, it is worth emphasizing one point: wanting-wanting, as wanting itself, as the quintessential act of the will, is not necessarily accompanied by a titanic effort.
- Neither effort nor difficulty substantially characterizes it.
- The essential and most relevant thing in love-wanting is precisely the freedom with which I carry it out or exercise it, the eminently active and free character of that operation.
- Sometimes, to accomplish such an act, I will have to strive and force myself: to overcome reluctance or tiredness, for example, or to put aside something that excites me.
- But, on many occasions, none of this will be necessary: it will suffice for me to encourage and follow the natural tendency of the will towards the good that the understanding presents to it.
When I love my wife, my children, or my grandchildren, I don’t usually need to force or strive to do so. Quite the opposite: perhaps after a period of passionate fervor and another of training with more or less struggle, it’s what comes naturally to me.
And when I want to love them even more—and more and more… and more—it doesn’t usually cause me any particular stress. The love I already have for them and the joys that come from it, which I’ve learned to discover and enjoy, encourage me to love them even more.
And, to achieve this, I can resort to that wonderful spring that is wanting-wanting.
The essential thing in love is precisely the freedom with which I love,
the eminently active and free character of that operation.
Love involves the whole person,
but its core is an act of will: wanting,
which often transforms into wanting-wanting.
(To be continued)
Tomás Melendo,
President of Edufamilia
http://www.edufamilia.com
[email protected]
EduFamilia
Edufamilia es una asociación sin ánimo de lucro, nacida en el año 2005. Su fundador, Tomás Melendo, advirtió que una mejora en la calidad de las familias facilitaría la resolución de bastantes de los problemas que aquejan a la sociedad de hoy. Y, apoyado siempre por su mujer, decidió lanzarse a esta aventura que cuenta con casi veinte años de vida y con múltiples ediciones de los distintos cursos formativos: Másteres y Maestrías, Expertos, cursos más breves, conferencias, ciclos culturales, seminarios y otros programas educativos. Aunque las primeras ediciones tuvieron carácter presencial, actualmente se ha hecho un gran esfuerzo por promover la infraestructura virtual para adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos y que la formación en torno a la familia alcance al mundo entero.
