Unsurpassable love
by Bob on August 7, 2007
A friend posed this question to me the other day: "Is there any love which is the only love in your whole life? And nobody can surpass it after that love?".
I was stunned by the depth of the question to which one could either be puzzled or answer much too trivially.
The question is devilishly simple. If we follow the Hollywood film romance model, the answer might be yes. If we follow literature, it would be a mixed answer. If we follow our human instinct we get another answer.
So, one ponders this sublime question.
I think in life we definitely hope for such a love. A love which never needs another ever again. A love which is so fulfilling that we can't even think about loving anyone else again. A love which is so mystical and yet transcendent that we cannot even define it rationally, but yet we feel it forever.
It exists. It happens. It is something we should look forward to and still always be open to. It itself is the mystery of life found. When two people join into one in their hearts, souls and beings. Despite mathematics, one and one makes one in this case.
It doesn't happen all that often, though. We tend to settle for a mundane but practical relationship which might work if we are not smitten by this kind of unstoppable love for another.
We see unsurpassable love in the case of people when they never marry again or team up with anyone else after their loved one dies before they do in old age. It just cannot be the same again.
The great poets of all cultures wrote about sublime and unsurpassable love and its existence. Troubadours sang of the love for their impossible-to-attain lady. Shakespeare wrote about it in Romeo and Juliet and in his sonnets. And so on.
It can also be mentioned that a "perfect" person to marry and one's unsurpassable lover might be two different things entirely. It would be great if they always were the same. Frequently, unsurpassable love and practicality are not able to co-exist in real day-to-day life. Sometimes it can. So one asks, do I marry the practical perfect person, or the love of my life? Well, one has little choice if one is in profound love for there exists no other.
So a co-requisite question would be if there are gradations of love. Perhaps. But gradations of unsurpassable love? Not in my opinion.
Emotions are a tricky business to analyse.
Let's hope the answer to my friend's question is that there is an unsurpassable love in life.
Other than that we must settle for less. That is unsettling to the heart's natural state.
Such is the human challenge.