Due to overwhelming responses to my previous post on "A Father's Thought," I hereby open another post to expand my thought on this topic a little bit; I can't expand it a whole lot more as my feeble brain won't allow it. (Editor's Note: The definition of overwhelming is really loose here.)
The way I see it unconditional love rarely exists. The only time I can love unconditionally is when my boys are just babies, that's the only time I don't expect anything in return. But as an infant grows into a toddler and cognition develops I do expect my love to be returned in kind. And for the most part, that's the kind of expectation I have from any living loving being who has a cognitive mind. Years ago, I was reading Milan Kundera's what else, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." (Editor's Note: Don't you just hate it when people name drop?) Forget about the mumble jumble of eternal returns or lightness blah blah blah. I remember Tereza claims she could love her dog without any condition and expect nothing from her dog but she can't love Tomas the way she loves her dog, that's, she expects Tomas to love her back the way she wants it. I think gee, I am beneath Tereza; even for a dog, I would expect it to be nice to me and bring my slippers just like how I read it when I was a kid. Otherwise, "to give birth to a piece of roast pork is better off than giving birth to you," as my Mom would share her wisdom with me in her folksy Chinese grocery market way.
So I don't believe in unconditional love. I believe in reciprocity. Of course, in some way I am really setting up myself for failure, because it's hard not to not love your children while at the same time there is absolutely no guarantee my children would love me back the way I hope they will love me back. Sadly, as a son myself, I know that first hand. And of course there is this unrequited love between men and women that is mostly experienced by ugly people in their ugly real life but hopelessly romanticized in fictions and movies by beautiful people. But that's another post for another time....
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Okay first of all this is a great post (and so was the first one in the series), so much so that I decided to comment to kick-start the inevitable overwhelming responses to this wonderful post of yours.
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of unconditional love, I don't think its existence is something that you believe in or not (I mean, it's not like the Yeti!), but something that hopefully people would work towards with their loved ones. So parents would forgive their children their tantrums and ingratitude and children would forgive their parents their neglect and favouritism and siblings would forgive each others' pettiness and casual cruelty. Love doesn't involve conditions so much as expectations, and if we could all learn not to force our own self-serving expectations on our loved ones and make allowances when the other person falls short, then to me that is kind of approaching unconditional love, no?
"Don't you hate it when people name-drop?"
Hah! Tell me about it! But you're not the kind of bloggers whose posts reek of so much self-importance that I sometimes want to scream at them to take their heads out of their own a***s for a while. You're not name-dropping when you've actually read the book and have formed your own opinion of it, and I look forward to more of this kind of name-dropping from you.
Re: Kundera's most cited (name-dropped) book. I remember that argument between Tereza and Thomas too, and what a fine way to bolster your argument on love being about reciprocity. But I'm soooo disappointed that you consider all his digressions about eternal returns and lightness of being mere "mumble-jumble" - all his philosophical musings are what to me so great about that novel, even though critics have said that they distract from the story.
Because I wanted to sound nonchalant so I make light of his eternal returns and lightness as mumble jumble.
ReplyDeleteI would love to name drop more but I simply can't. The sad truth is I don't read that much.
I did look up unconditional love and I realize I did miss certain angles but you sort of completed it for me. Anyway I said what I wanted to say, that's I do look for reciprocity as a parent and as a loving human being, I guess I would love my kids no matter what like the part you mentioned but the expectation that my love is to be reciprocated is there and is real.
And thanks for the compliments of course.