Thursday, February 22, 2007
 

St. Valentine, frustration and meaning

I’ve just read, on Europe Press, that the seeing all those hearts on the shops, all that publicity on TV with lovers offering gifts to each others, and all those movies with love and romance abounding during St. Valentine Season, can provoke some anguish and frustration to those who want to have partners but, simply, don’t.

At least that’s what Leonor Casalins said.

She said that “all this stimulation offered day after day” could lead to a bigger desire and need of having a partner, “frustrating” those who don’t have but want. According to her, “there is a need to share life with someone e some moment” and “most people need a partner”, among other “biological needs”.

This reminds me, once more, of Viktor Frankl, who once said:

By his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of the what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.

This is a fact: by loving we allow ourselves to show our potentialities. And, usually people is unaware of that. We know that love is good, and relationships amazing, but we just don’t know why.

And we keep searching and searching for this true love to come, to make ourselves more complete, more unique, more humans. Like Majnun searching for Layli everywhere:

It is related that one day they came upon Majnun sifting the dust, and his tears flowing down. They said, “What doest thou?” He said, “I seek for Layli.” They cried, “Alas for thee! Layli is of pure spirit, and thou seekest her in the dust!” He said, “I seek her everywhere; haply somewhere I shall find her.”

Baha'u'llah, The Seven Valleys, p. 6.

Maybe we should be aware our Layli could be everywhere. But should we be looking for her everywhere? I don’t recall reading Majnun ever finding her, just like the poem from Saná’í:

Never the covetous heart shall come to the stealer of hearts,

Never the shrouded soul unite with beauty's rose.

Frankl explains us that by searching pleasure by itself we shall end up frustrating both the will of pleasure and the will of meaning. Furthermore he adds that pleasure should be the secondary effect of our meaningful actions. Only this way, the “covetous heart” can progress to a degree where it shall attain the hearts, and the “shrouded soul” “unite with beauty's rose”.

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