Do you love your parents? Kids? Friends? Leaders? Does your love towards the precious ones make
you blind towards their shortcomings? How real is your love? Interested, then keep reading as I try to
tackle one of greatest motivation in life, love…
Love surely starts at birth… An attentive set of parents, a mirroring mother, caring siblings can make
us feel safe, connected, accepted and appreciated. We learn how to give and receive love from our
family… Family is supposed to be the first source of ‘ unconditional love’. Au contraire to the general
belief, the source of unconditional love is not the parents but the babies since babies only know how
to love unconditionally. Often, babies with negligent or an abusive set of parents will not find any
fault to them. Instead, as they grow, they will try to cope by taking the blame upon themselves,
walking away from their authenticity or suppressing their thoughts and emotions. In that sense, the
love starts pretty blindly…
One would expect, as the years go by, individuals can move away from blind love and connect with
people whom they choose consciously. However, anyone who had some encounters with love, would
tell you how ‘crazy’ love is, how illogical and how wonderful it feels… Research show that we tend to
get romantically involved with individuals not because of those crazy green eyes or that cute nose
but because they seem very familiar to us. This predisposition of attachment is subconsciously
related to unresolved trauma from the past or a dynamic we have not been able to solve before. In
that sense, while love gives us a chance to heal ourselves, undo past drama, it makes us totally blind,
once more.
Love can the blindest when it comes to leaders; eliciting a sense of collective belonging combined
with a national pride can be base for a long-lasting authority but is a slippery slope. Following a
leader blindfolded not only scars future generations but also leaves the leader poisoned with power.
Without any objective feedback, constructive criticism, exchange of ideas; a once caring leader can
turn unresponsive, unresponsible, and quite authoritarian…. It is not a coincidence that oppressive
leaders first tackle independent media as they would like to keep the blinds on the eyes of the public.
So the questions is, how can we love without being blinded by it. The answer is in Erich Fromm’s
book of ‘The Art of Loving’. He says, ‘the main condition for achievement of love is the overcoming of
one’s narcissism. The opposite pole of narcissism is objectivity and objectivity are the faculty to be
able to see people and things as they are and being able to separate this objective picture from a
picture which is formed by one’s desires or fears… Only then, love is real and not blind… So next time
you say you love someone, pay attention to how real it is, are you in love with a dream or the real
deal.
Happy Valentine’s Day!