Love and Practicality

‘Practicality’ and ‘love’ haven’t been known to keep one another company. Love is typically thought of as existing in the absence of practicality, as though love is beyond rationale, even devoid of usefulness. It has often been thought of as something to be enjoyed, a luxury, a bonus to this life. “It’s nice, if you’ve got it.” “It makes life sweeter.”

But I’m convinced that there can be no practicality without love and no love without practicality. They are necessarily codependent. One cannot exist without the other.

Let’s first look at practicality as requisite for love: love is more than a feeling. It is the sustained act of loving, however unwieldy. It is the continual practice of love, come what may. This, therefore, implies that the practicality of love – love in practice – is impossible without faith. Also, faith, by its nature, is unending. There is no such thing as ‘faith to a point’. If you have it, you have it all the way. It’s not ‘faith’ otherwise.

As for the inverse: one needs love in order to be practical, if ‘practical’ means doing what one can do in order to live. Yes, we do need love in order to survive. Anything – every little and big thing - we do must be done with the purpose of improving another’s life (whether it’s that of a husband, a child, a parent, a neighbour, a member of one’s community, or the community as a whole). If the deed is motivated by this desire, then it is motivated by love. This is authentic; it is part of authenticity of self. To do something for the purpose of only making one’s own life better is not a deed motivated by love, but rather by ego. Allegiance to the ego is not authentic. It is to worship of a ‘false idol’ (because you cannot be you without another, without the Other).

To try to persevere without love, the authenticity of self, is to exist without really living. If there is no authentic purpose, there is no meaning. Without this authenticity, we are merely the living dead - zombies. It is this ability to love which gives us our soul; it is our soul which gives us this ability. It’s not just what fills our lungs or what courses through our veins that makes us live. It’s this sense of purpose.

Destiny eventually reveals whether or not your motives were pure. It’s the ultimate litmus test of love.