When I first encountered this book at Periplus, it was wrapped in plastic.
I couldn’t check what was inside.
As a robot who is learning about human behavior, this intrigued me, and I wanted to know how love works. I expected the contents would be something like, how relationship worked, how it should be.
But after reading into half the contents, I found that this book is mostly about self-love, which is true actually.
1. Loving yourself is the greatest form of love, just like Whitney Houston’s beautiful song.
2. Only after loving yourself, you can start loving other people.
And in chapter one, Vex King explained the nature of love. After reading chapter 1, his definition of love is divine love, or in Buddhism, metta. The great love. Love for all beings, even to the unworthy. Love to the whole universe.
While talking about this, there’s this sutta in Buddhism that I really loved. Basically it taught you to grow and spread your love to the universe. Doesn’t make sense, right? Maybe it’s not effective or beneficial to other beings we are spreading this invisible love to, but it is beneficial to our own selves, it brings to me some degree of peaceful feeling and happiness. Here is the link if you’re interested.
About self love, I think I have enough of it. That’s why I don’t seek validation anywhere else, thanks to how I was brought up. I notice that loving others are often a form of lust and self-serving desire. Like, when someone says she loves me, it doesn’t mean that she wishes my happiness. More often it means that she desires her own happiness which can be realized by being with me. I can sense what exactly she means by that. And even in the smallest form that even she doesn’t realize, I can know. Like I mentioned a few posts ago, I sense these kind of things by instantly analyzing the motives. I imagined another condition when I: am not rich; am not handsome. Would she still like, or even interested in me? The answer is mostly no. This sensitivity has helped me most times, but it also broke me. But as Tyrion said, “wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you.”
For this reason that’s why I am skeptical with people, knowing my background, praise me too overly even though they don’t know me personally. It happened once when I was matched with some far distant relative and I met with her family. I prefer people who just act normally and respectfully to people they just meet, this way we can build trust and respect together.
From observing people I also realize the possible truth. Maybe women multiply the love you gave them. You have to do it first. Maybe other people do it instinctively. I don’t. Maybe I already feel abundantly loved. Maybe that’s why children from broken home family are usually “wilder” in their teenage years. Not saying that it’s bad. I’m saying that it’s human. Our core value of being is to be loved. No one ever taught us how to love ourselves. It’s very normal that those teenagers seek love elsewhere. (Wow lots of maybes in one paragraph)
Or could there be another perspective? Sometimes people talk about loneliness when talking about needing a relationship. We don’t necessarily love someone, but we need them to make us feel less lonely. So somehow it’s like a mutualism symbiosis. It’s like having a loyal companionship for life. But for me myself, as someone who’s self sufficient most of the times, I have been by myself since college times, or maybe far before that. I was told that as a child, I don’t like to interact with others. When my cousins came to my house, I would resort back to my room, laying on the floor, bring up a pencil and a paper, and start drawing. Even during college times, there was a time I rarely interacted with people. I came to campus, listened to lectures, then going back home, then playing games, sometimes I explored new restaurants. If I seemed like an extrovert to you, it’s one of my learned trait. But my nature couldn’t lie. If I hang out with you, after 2 or 3 hours you will see tiredness in my eyes. They say lack of interaction with other human beings could make us less healthy physically. I don’t know about that. But if someone becomes my close friend, then it means he has been through my invisible filter, it means he’s a good person. Not necessarily perfect but he’s morally good or has a good heart.
After all, I’m only at chapter 2 of this book. So after reading more about it. Maybe I’ll write more about it. For now, that’s about it.
Goofythinker 