This is the first article I’ve written together with my AI twin 👻, which I created with Stroke – an app to train and use your own personal AI twin for creative work.
I am deeply convinced that love is the key to everything. It is the most important aspect of my life and, in my view, the most essential aspect of humanity as a whole. Take love away, and everything collapses. Technological progress will stop, art will be forgotten — for whom, for what would one create? In the absence of love, everything turns into a life imitation. The meaninglessness of existence would become unbearable, and a human being would choose to end it.
That is exactly what would happen. And this is why there is no topic more important, more essential, than the conversation about love.
This article is only my personal opinion and an attempt to write down my own thoughts on this matter at a particular moment in my life. Sooner or later, I believe every human being has to ask themselves the question: what does love mean to me, and what role does it play in my life?
For me, love became an all-encompassing concept, one in which I finally found answers to all the pressing questions of my life that had long bothered me. It was a light finally turned on in a very-very dark room. In that room, many things were scattered and written. But to the blindly touch, it all felt like pure chaos. It was especially unbearable for me. I touched it all, yet nothing made any true sense of anything, and I kept walking through the darkness.
Then, when love (in a sense I described below) illuminated my dark room, I was able to see everything I had been searching for.
What is love for me?
First of all, let me say this: for me, love is a feeling of act, and it doesn’t tolerate delays. It knows no hesitation, because it lives in actions only. This feeling, or i could say this flow, emerges from inside of me and demands expression along the way I interact with the world around with myself.
This expression takes place through specific actions at specific moments in a time.
This brings me to a remarkable example: Can I love someone on our first date? Yes, I can. Can I choose not to love them on the second? Yes, I can. And on the third, can I love them again? And again, the answer is “Yes, I can.” Because love is not a frozen feeling, but a choice I make in each moment of my life. It depends on these choices and the actions that follow whether my love is alive or dead.
I am convinced that this feeling lives in us from the very beginning, and it can awaken either on its own or with external influence. It has the strong power to awaken. Sometimes, a single glance at another human awakens something deep inside of us that lasts a lifetime. Other times, feeling of love is stirred by the bold actions and moves human being sees, or by a painting, or by a book.
But due to inexperience, I often chose not to love, turning away from the expression that my feeling sought. I started to make foolish mistakes, and the light would quickly fades, leaving me solo in darkness again. In those moments, I could see nothing inside myself anymore again – and it was this that taught me to value that light even more.
Love in act
As I mentioned above, for me love is not a frozen feeling, but a choice, and the following actions I take or fail to take. Whether my love is alive or dead depends on this. From this depends whether my inner room is illuminated or remains in darkness.
Any action can be an object of love, if I choose to. For example, take a work:
Every time I do my work, I imagine how my loved ones try the product I create, how they use it, and what benefit gets from the usage. What emotions will they feel? Will it bring them delight, or confusion? Will I meet their needs, or simply take away precious minutes of their lives for meaningless actions?
For me, these questions serve as a brilliant compass — the best I have ever used in my professional field. Everything becomes so much easier and clearer, doesn’t it?
Things get a bit more complicated when we touch other people’s lives. What comes to the forefront for me is the other person and their own sense of happiness, and beauty. The ability to listen and emotionally feel another person is a deal-breaker here.
Life is wonderfully diverse. In all my experience, I’ve never met two people who are exactly alike. Each of us comes into this world to face their own lessons and beat their own demons. Each one is looking for their own happiness and dreams that are uniquely their own.
Therefore, if I want to express true love, my actions must be directed toward the happiness and well-being of the other human being, precisely in the way they themselves understand and accept it — not in the way I imagine it for them.
Sometimes I realize that the best thing I can do at the moment is simply do nothing. Strangely enough, this requires enormous effort from me, because I am an active person by nature, and it’s natural for me to be actively involved in everything that happens around me. But if inaction is the best course at a given moment, then that is what I’m gonna do. Simply being near is already a great contribution and an act of love to another human being’s happiness.
It’s hard to describe everything. But love will always guide us to the best path.
Love to myself
One of the great insights I’ve received from interacting with the world is that the more I am filled with love myself, the more I am able to give away.
That’s why I strive to love myself, honestly acknowledging what I truly deserve. After that, I choose not to give in to laziness or faintheartedness, but to take actions that could bring me to where I am meant to be.
In my actions, I strive to avoid diminishing myself. When I do so, I immerse the people around me in the illusion of what is natural and normal in this life. And of course, this has nothing to do with true love. True love shouldn’t distort the sense of reality. Vice versa. The closer we are to reality, the closer we are to the truth, and the closer we are to true love.
Interesting. I’ve just realized that I have almost stopped finding myself in situations where I should face such choices. The bright light in my inner room allows me to find myself in such conditions less often and find harmony between myself and the world around me more easily.
P.S.
Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in A Writer’s Diary:
Love is so powerful that it transforms and recreate us.
I hope that soon I will meet more and more human beings for whom love as important as it is for me.