2007-11-02 02:58:24 · 22 answers · asked by Anonymous in Entertainment & Music ➔ Polls & Surveys
When you love someone, you put them first, their safety, their happiness, their wholeness, their completion -- all that comes before your own. So love means sacrifice -- I want this and need this, but in order for you, whom I love, to be complete, be safe, be whole, you must have THIS. And in order for me to be sure you have THIS, I cannot have what I want and need. So, because I love you, I sacrifice personal wants and needs for yours.
This is painful for me, but because I love you and my greatest joy is experiencing your joy, it counterbalances the pain.
A young man from Long Island recently won the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously. He was killed in Afghanistan when he knowingly drew enemy fire onto himself in order to give his men a chance to live. This was an act of love. Love is why parents sacrifice for their children, even to the point of destroying their own health or life to be sure their children have the opportunity to live a whole or a safe life.
I read a wonderful book many years ago, called "Children of War" by a NY Times reporter who had covered international news from war zones. He was interested in the complicated effects of war on the children in those zones, and the book was a "case study" of children in each of the major war zones at that time.
One of the children was a young boy with Spock-like ears and a serious face, from -- I think -- Cambodia. There was he, his mother and his baby brother, and when the marauding soldiers came to his village, his mother loaded his baby brother on his back, telling him to run for his life, and then she went out the door to divert the soldiers, who raped and killed her. Her last words to her son were, "My son, get revenge!"
He took off through the jungle with his baby brother on his back, headed for the border. They avoided soldiers on the way, and were shot at, and at the end of one weary day, both boys covered with sweat, he stopped to rest, and lowered his baby brother from his back -- and discovered that his baby brother's sweat was not sweat but blood. He was dead; he had taken a bullet and died without his running brother even knowing he was wounded. Alone now and with only his mother's order to get revenge, the older boy struggled on, crossed the border, and was in a refugee camp when the reporter interviewed him, recording the boy's desire for revenge.
A year or two later, the reporter did a follow up on each of the children he had interviewed for the book, so that he and his readers could know what had come of each of these children. He found the Cambodian boy -- no longer in southeast Asia -- but in the United States, adopted by an American family, in school. When he spoke with the boy, he was impressed by the boy's balance and reason. He had plans -- I don't recall whether he wanted to be an architect, a research scientist or an M.D., but that was the sort of goal he had in mind, and his demeanor, grades and studies were in line with his goal. He was on his way to a solid, complete, successful professional life.
When the reporter asked him why he had such lofty goals and what motivated him to be so disciplined, the boy said, "Revenge."
The boy's mother had sacrificed her self to give her boys a chance to survive. But survival is not just quantitative -- his life was spared -- it is most importantly qualitative. The violence of the murderers had not poisoned his soul. The boy could still love. And THAT was his mother's greatest gift to him
His revenge was to live a good life, to complete his mother's destroyed life with his own peaceful success, to answer her love with his own. Living well is the best revenge. It is in this way that love is strong as death, and it is in this way that love is the antidote to hate, to violence and to annihilation. It is the only balm for a lacerated soul and the only antidote for evil.
So love, because it involves sacrifice and denial -- and can involve terrible loss -- involves real, real pain. But it is an exquisite pain, because it also involves joy, and it is the only way to live.
You are a young girl, and you asked one question. I am an old lady, and I know the real pain of love, so I answered another. Maybe it will help.
2007-11-02 04:02:56 · answer #1 · answered by Mercy 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋
No. I've suffered for love in the past, when relationships ended, but I don't believe I've suffered the "real pain of love", like I would if it ended with my current boyfriend or if something happened to him....
No, and I hope I never feel it!
2007-11-02 10:32:21 · answer #2 · answered by wendy r 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The real pain of loves comes when you lose it. It doesn't matter how it's lost, only that you no longer have it. The pain of love feels like death.
2007-11-02 10:01:29 · answer #3 · answered by professor grey 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Everyone knows about the pain of love, so my question to you is: What do you mean by "real"?
2007-11-02 10:01:00 · answer #4 · answered by FRANsuFU 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
i know the pain of losing the one you love
2007-11-02 10:03:19 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Yes its all too familiar. I fall in love so completely that it consumes everything I have. But at least the other people fall for me too, so its never one-sided.
2007-11-02 10:01:57 · answer #6 · answered by Cassandra C 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I did! when i first met my first love and he walked all over me then dumped me! But now i am married with 2 beautiful children and i couldn't care less now.
2007-11-02 10:02:33 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
i knw coz i m bearing dat pain frm last 5 years.........
u kan understand iu u also experienced pain of love.
2007-11-02 10:00:55 · answer #8 · answered by Deserted soul 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
ME! these past 5 years have been very rough!
2007-11-02 10:02:21 · answer #9 · answered by poopykins81 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
i'm the queen of pain
2007-11-02 10:03:15 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋