In Difference
#193: Is there a Difference?
...between loving someone and being in love with someone? Does the word "in" make a world of difference? I love you vs. I am IN love with you.
I think there is a difference in terms of the level of engagement. One is an overflow of one's heart. It is directional in nature - the flow of which can be increased (or reduced) accordingly by descriptors such as 'very', 'really', 'much' , 'heaps.' I love you. I really really love shoes too. Very much.
The other is a diving deep into the other's heart. It is illustrative of how you have let something embrace you... envelope you. The depth is dictated by the depth of love itself and not one's capacity to love. You are IN it just as a fly is in a bowl of soup. It knows it is in there with or without an idea of how big the bowl is or how much farther the soup it is immersed in extends.
Is it a real difference or merely a perceived one?
Either way, is it an important difference?
Hmm.
posted by VivaGlam! at 9:10 PM
6 Comments:
why is it that you have 8 comments on a blog about diamonds and (till now) none about love and 'in love'?
8:54 PM
Muhahaha! Perhaps one is measurable, the other is not.
(You know, if you and I answer each other at least 4 times, we'll have more comments here than in the Diamonds post.) :)
7:55 AM
so are you saying you can't measure love? perhaps you can. how much does one love..the answer would be a measure, would it not? could the answer that he loved so much that he died for them, be a measure?
9:20 AM
Maybe measure is the wrong word. Maybe "quantifiable" is the more appropriate term. (Which may mean the same thing, but let me continue...) Love may be measurable using descriptors - "this much"... "so much I can give my life for you"... "like a fat kid loves cake"... "like bees love honey"...
But to peg a quantity to it - how is that possible? Can we quantify Christ's love by saying that it is equivalent to 1 death? Or how can we put a number on everything He gave up to come down on earth? Is it in decibels that we measure His agonizing cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
You just know that there is so much love in that act and you just know that our human minds cannot put a fence around it and say, "this much."
Can love be then measured or quantified on a more micro level? Wouldn't that be ideal? To have one cup of love each for each other - that way you know that love is in equal measure... More and more, one realizes that there is no guarantee that love will always find reciprocation in equal degrees. More and more, one realizes that "I love you much" is relative and that the only way you can hold on to it is to decide to always be IN it whether "much" is too much or too little.
And so, in the process of confusing myself getting out of these knots, I think there is a shadow of an answer. Being IN love is better.
1:05 PM
...yet providing an example of love that is boundless does not inherently remove the notion of love being measurable (= quantifiable)since it is a case where the amount of or nature of that love is beyond all measure. yet love that is short of the boundless love, could by implication have a boundary, and thus be quantified. The fact that one does not have the satisfying units, should not present a problem. for example, the value of a diamond may be quantified by a USD value, which derives from other human constructs of value, namely all thos c's.
notwithstanding, is the reason people have not responded to 'love' whilst they have to 'diamonds', really a function of them being able to attach a quantifiable value? why should something that can be measured, attract greater discussion than something that cannot?
no, i think vivaglam! you will need to think of another explanation for this phenomenon.
8:41 PM
On to theory # 2.
Maybe because everyone can have an opinion about diamonds but not everyone has experienced love to the point of having an opinion on whether "IN" makes a difference or not. They may have experienced greater or lesser loves - ones that just overwhelm and give you no space to breathe or muse whether IN matters; or ones that barely need qualifiers because the three words, I, LOVE, YOU, are enough to make them true.
Or maybe people are taking their cue from the title. Indifference. Once, someone told me that the opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. I was on the bus yesterday thinking about that. I think it's like saying that the opposite of right is left, which is just as valid as saying that its opposite is wrong. Maybe, the opposite of indifference is something that can be positive or negative but is just there, say, emotion.... thus freeing love to be the opposite of hate.
This needs another night stargazing on the beach.
7:44 AM
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