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Alan Watts on The Most Fundamental Human Desire: To Love and Be Loved
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There is a curious paradox which is to
love is unconditional but to be loved is conditional.
conditional.
By the time one has crossed the 30s or
40s they have seen enough of life to
know that the fairy tales of youth were
at best charming illusion.
One begins to understand that love does
not appear as a reward for virtue, nor
is it guaranteed to remain simply
because you have been loyal, patient, or deserving.
deserving.
Some have poured themselves,
drop by drop, into the vessel of
another's life, only to watch it leak
away through fingers that once clung to
them. Others still dwell beneath the
same roof with their chosen companion,
yet feel as though they have become a
stranger at their own table. And there
are those who have wandered from heart
to heart, thinking that the next
embrace, the next yes, would finally
fill the hollow within only to find the
emptiness echo back at them.
You begin to wonder why something as
natural as love has become such a
labyrinth of conditions, unspoken
bargains and quiet disappointments.
You sense that somewhere beneath all the
poetry and promises, there is a truth
you have been avoiding. For love as it
is sold to us is not love at all, but
something dressed in its garment.
And here perhaps lies the seed of our
quiet discontent. We have confused the
appearance of love with love itself, the
structure that holds it with the living
thing it was meant to carry.
From our earliest breath, the world
whispered its bargain into our ears.
Love is something to be earned. Behave
as you are told and you will be
cherished. Fulfill the needs of another
and you will be kept. Offer beauty,
strength, usefulness, devotion and the
reward will be love.
But this is not love. It is a
transaction. masquerading as tenderness.
It is the polite exchange of commodities
between two people who have been taught
to call their bargain romance.
You see, a bargain can hold people
together, but it cannot nourish them.
Like two merchants bound by contract,
they remain so long as the terms are
met. And when they are not, they part.
No matter how many years have passed, no
matter how deeply your lives have
entwined, the invisible ledger will one
day be brought to the table and the sums
will be counted. Many men and women wake
in the middle years of life to the cold
recognition that what they once believed
was love was only an arrangement.
It might have been cloaked in vows
before God, adorned with flowers or
sealed with the trembling promises of
youth, but the heart of it was a simple
pact. I will give you what you desire if
you will give me what I desire.
And when the giving stops,
whether through weariness,
age, illness, or simple change, the
warmth fades.
The eyes that once sparkled at your
arrival now glance past you as if you
had become little more than a shadow in
the room.
We were never told as children that such
love is a performance and that
performances end. When you mistake the
bargain for love itself, you spend your
years in quiet exhaustion. You give your
time, your loyalty, your devotion.
Believing this will secure the thing
your soul longs for. But what you have
secured is not love. Only the
continuence of an arrangement. And so it
happens that many after years of
faithful giving find themselves
bewildered when the warmth fades.
Not because they cease to care, but
because life has moved, as all things
do. Nothing stands still. Even stone
wears away. Even plastic warps with
time. The man or woman you first knew
has changed just as you have. And the
bond built upon fixed terms begins to
strain under the weight of impermanence.
And there is another truth more
difficult to swallow. When the demands
of the bargain are no longer met, the
mask will fall. In the absence of what
they sought from you, be it comfort,
affirmation, or security, some will show
you who they truly are. The tenderness
you thought was theirs by nature may
vanish, revealing not cruelty perhaps,
but a hollowess where love was never rooted.
rooted.
You may have felt it. The gaze that no
longer lingers. The laughter replaced by
a cold and watchful silence. The shift
is so quiet you can almost convince
yourself it isn't there. But in that
stillness you see it. You were cherished
not for your being but for the service
you rendered. And when such a union
falters, it does not simply end. It
unravels something inside you. It leaves
you staring at the ruins asking whether
you were ever truly loved or only ever necessary.
necessary.
Love is not a bargain nor is it a chain.
It is not I will if you will, nor the
silent counting of who has given more.
Such things belong to the marketplace,
not to the heart. True love is a
freedom, the liberty to give without
ledger or demand. It is to be fully
present with another, not to bind them,
but to care for
simply because the caring itself is joy.
It is a gift given without the shadow of
a contract, without the fear that it
must be returned in equal measure. But
here lies the paradox. Such love cannot
be given by one who is starving for it.
The heart that is desperate to be loved
back will always in some hidden way
attach strings to its giving. It will
watch. It will measure. It will wait for
the return. And when it does not come,
bitterness will grow like ivy through
the soul. You cannot love freely until
you have ceased to beg for love. And you
cannot cease to beg until you have found
within yourself a source that does not
run dry. That source is not in another's
eyes, nor in their approval. It is in
the quiet knowing that you are already
the child of the very life that breathed
you into being. Call it God. Call it the
eternal. Call it the nameless mystery.
It has loved you into existence. Before
you could earn or deserve a thing. Look
at the sun. Even after all this time,
the sun never says to the earth, "You
owe me." Look what happens with a love
like that. It lights the whole sky.
To know this is to stand unshaken
whether others love you or turn away.
Then and only then can you give love as
the sun gives light. Not to be thanked,
not to be owed, but because it cannot
help itself.
To love is your freedom. No one can take
it from you. It is the act of your own
being. The overflow of the life that
moves through you. You may give it to
one, to many, or to the whole world, but
it remains yours to give, to be loved.
Now that is another matter that is never
in your keeping. You cannot command it,
purchase it, or reason it into being.
Love offered to you, is a gift of its
own accord, arriving when it will,
leaving when it must. It is as the wind
that brushes your cheek. You may open
your arms to it, but you cannot hold it
there forever. If love is given to you,
receive it with gratitude. Drink of it
while it flows, but never clutch at it
as though it were the last drop in the
world. For the moment you try to drag it
from another's hands, it ceases to be
love and becomes something else.
Obligation, pity, or bondage.
And remember this, you are already loved
not by the fickle tides of human
affection, but by the source from which
you came. It breathed you into life
without condition, without demand. To
see this is to know you are never wholly
bereft. If you wish for love from
others, it must begin here in loving
yourself, not in the shallow sense of
indulgence, but in the deep sense of
accepting your own being without
reserve. For a heart at peace with
itself no longer begs, it invites. And
when two such hearts meet, their love is
not a trade, but a meeting of rivers,
each full from its own spring. [Music]
[Music]
When two people who have learned to
dwell at peace within themselves, come
together, it is not to be filled,
for their cups are already full. They do
not arrive at each other's door as
beggars, bowls outstretched. They come
as givers carrying abundance that spills
over the rim.
In such a union there is no bargaining.
No one is keeping score.
No quiet dread of who owes whom. Love is
not given to earn nor withheld to
punish. It moves as naturally as breath
as the tide that rises and falls without
being told.
Here the joy is not in taking but in
sharing. There is no hunger in the eyes
only light. One gives not because the
other demands it but because giving is
the most natural expression of their
being and so both are fed not by the
draining of one into the other but by
the overflow of each. This is the only
love that does not rot into resentment.
For where there is no emptiness to be
filled, there is no fear of losing. When
two full hearts meet, they are free to
let each other be, to grow, to change,
to wander, and return without the
grasping that turns love into a cage.
And yet
such a meeting is rare. For most search
the world to find another who will
complete them, not knowing they were
never half a person to begin with. Only
when you drink deeply from your own well
will you find another who drinks from
theirs. And together you will not merely
survive, you will overflow.
The world you meet each day is not a
stranger. It is yourself in another
form. You cannot draw from a well what
is not in it. Nor can you meet in others
what you have not yet met in your own
heart if you carry a hollowess within.
You will find yourself surrounded by
those who take. Not because the world
conspires against you but because nature
fills a vacuum. Those who have nothing
will seek from you what you have not
given to yourself and you will mistake
their hunger for love. [Music]
[Music] If
If
on the other hand you move through life
with a fullness of being, you will meet
those who also carry an abundance. They
will not clutch at you or drain you, for
they are not living on scraps. Instead,
you will find an ease in their company.
a recognition as though you had always
known them. This is not a mystical trick
nor some hidden cosmic law, but a simple
truth of human meeting.
The depth to which you have faced
yourself becomes the depth to which you
can meet another. Most quarrels in love
are not between two people, but between
the unexamined shadows each has brought along.
along.
So before you go searching for kindness,
tenderness, or devotion in the eyes of
another, turn inward and meet your own
gaze. Not to condemn yourself, nor to
tally your flaws, but to make the
acquaintance of the stranger you have
long carried in silence. For it is this
hidden self, who extends the invitation
to others, this unseen presence, who
will decide whether the love you meet
will be a feast to your soul or the slow
unraveling of it. When this truth takes
root in you, do not hoard it. Place it
gently in the hands of your children,
for they are stepping into the same
illusion that once ins snared you. Teach
them that love is not the trembling
romance of songs, nor the solemn bargain
sealed before altar and law. It is the
willingness to give without the shadow
of a demand, to care without the
constant fear of loss.
If they do not learn this, they will
build their homes upon sand and watch
them crumble.
But if they do, they will stand on rock,
and love will not be a cage,
but a sky.
The question is not how can I find
someone to love me, but the question is
how can I become someone who overflows?
For when love is no longer a plea but a
gift, when joy is no longer chained to
another's approval, you will see that to
love and be loved is not something to
chase. It is the way you already are.
You are not a half searching for the
other half. You are whole. And from that
wholeness, love flows, finding those who
recognize it instantly. Then love ceases
to be a hunt or a bargain or a desperate
keeping. It becomes the quiet, steady
light of the sun, needing nothing in
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