Response to a Reader
Yesterday, I made a post entitled “Is Love the Answer?” In the comments of this post, a reader, going by the name “NK,” put forward a detailed and sophisticated response. In this post, I am going to go through the reader’s response, paragraph by paragraph, and respond to it.
In NK’s words:
man fears all, everyone. fear that he will harm those he wants love from, which leads him to reject love from them. he fears his own power, the unknown and forgotten, everything he ever do is because of fear.
Fear is one of the primary human motivations, and has been for millennia. And for good reason. Nothing is ever certain, and nothing is ever completely safe. You can never be completely sure that you are making the right choice, which means that every choice is a risk. And what choice could be greater than the choice to love? And therefore what risk could be greater than the risk to love?
Man does indeed fear his own power, the “unknown and forgotten.” This power — the capacity to take the risk and to love regardless — is unknown because few have dared to meddle with it, and it is forgotten because man sinks into his comfortable patterns, and comes to love the lock on his own mental prison so much that he forgets about the key.
NK continues:
perhaps that is a way of life one can take, but one shouldn’t suffer alone, and they have to see that they live in a complex world with others who are very much alike even though they don’t seem like it on the surface, everything one do out of fear to protect themselves and others leads to suffering of themselves and the very same they wanted to protect.
NK acknowledges that “perhaps this is a way of life one can take.” He understands that for many, especially the cowardly, this way of life may even be necessary. However, it remains a deeply impoverished way of being in the world. We all must suffer. However, we have a choice: to suffer alone, or to suffer together. And in NK’s words, “one shouldn’t suffer alone.”
We may feel alienated from each other, but the fundamental predicament of every human being is the same. We all suffer, and we all search for a cure for this suffering. This is why NK says that we live in a world with “others who are very much alike even though they don’t seem like it on the surface.” We may be different in race, sex, interest, and music taste. However, we are all the same in one fundamental regard: we all suffer. And we all act out of fear, which leads to even greater suffering, even in the people we love most.
if men man loves all, everything. love will blind them of the suffering, but from that they gain hope, acceptance of self and the feelings of others alike, recognizing one’s responsibility in life as well as many other wisdoms they can learn from those who also open their hearts. then to live a life as an unstoppable force.
If suffering is the fundamental condition of man, then we are faced with a question: what is the cure for this suffering? NK offers an answer: love. Of men, he writes that “love will blind them of suffering.” In seeing one’s responsibility in life as that of a lover — a lover of the self, the other, and the world around him — man is able to transcend his suffering. He is able to accept that who’s unacceptability once tortured him. And he is able to open his heart and gain hope.
NK says it better than I ever could have. Once he learns how to love, man is “then to live a life as an unstoppable force.”