“We all must have passion, without it we are not, we cannot.  We all must act on our passion, for not doing so means we are no longer ourselves.  It is better to act upon what makes us than to hold back and regret the passing by of possible happiness. Our passions, our love, hate, and our feelings make up what we are, instead of just our flesh bodies.”
~Eleine Sun

A Philosophy on Ethics and Love
Contradiction?
Eleine Sun

“I wish only for your happiness, knowing I can never be yours to share it.”
~Oruha (Clover by CLAMP)

What is love? How does one love? What exactly do we love? What is the expected way we are “supposed” to “think” if we are in love? What is the way of ethics? Is there a contradiction between someone truly in love and with being able to have a perfect set of ethics?

When we love someone, do we love the person? Or perhaps we love their personality, their past actions. Maybe we love their physical appearance only, although that is most definitely not my definition of love. Perhaps, as I believe, we love our memory of them. If what we remember of them is good, what does it matter of what the person is really like? We do not know, and so we cannot say. Perhaps, though, the future of mankind will reveal the answer to that question.

When in love, most people think that they should have the person they love, for the love to be theirs, and theirs alone.  But, is this not selfishness? I believe that if we truly love someone, we should not want only to be with them in order for the self to be happy.  We should not want them to love only us, in return, or even notice our very existence.  If we are truly in love with someone we should not want our happiness, but theirs. If we are truly in love, we should not want or require anything of them. We should give to them in every way possible.

If the loved does not love the lover, the love should not feel anger against the loved, but hope that the loved can find their own love and happiness. The lover should not want solely for the loved to love the lover back, but for the loved to be truly happy.  If the loved wanted and could love someone else so that both the loved and the person they love would be happy, we should give them the chance to make someone else happy, to let them follow a good path of morality.

For those who love someone that are already in a relationship with someone else, we should only contemplate how happy the two are, and instead of being loved, be truly ethical.  If we truly love someone, we should devote ourselves to them, not vice versa.  I find that in this world there is a lack of people whom know or agree with my ideas of what true love is, as also a lack of people whom have experienced it.
Love is not the need or want of our own happiness, but the happiness of the one we love, and ultimately the happiness of everyone.  It is a true altruism, true ethics, and absolute unselfishness. For the one we love, we should be happy just to know they are happy.

The world seems to perceive that if we love someone, we should devote ourselves to them and have them love no other but ourselves, to make none but ourselves happy.  It seems to be human will or nature that has commanded our “minds” to think of it as that, but in our “hearts” we should want the loved to be happy.  Our human will though seems to overpower our ethics when it comes to love, and upon such ground great wars have been fought, the long and bloody Trojan War fought over Helen of Greece is a perfect example.  Therefore, what society believes to be true love and true ethics will always contradict each other. In the end it goes back to one question, is it better for others to be happy at the cost of our pain or to be happy ourselves at the cost of another’s pain? The answer is itself an infinitely stretching paradox because it expects the perfect ethic out of people, which is highly unlikely to ever exist, not when our human nature continues to stand in the way.

The answer?

If we truly love someone, we should feel happy if they are truly happy even if it is not because the loved loves us back.