Love Is an Existential Problem
Love is an existential problem
Love is highly sought after, celebrated and envied. It is universally understood to be between two inspired individuals, fatefully drawn to each other and ready to compromise their lives for the other persons sake. Nothing is perfect, neither is love. Love is a existential problem, as soon as a couple falls in love, the freedom of each is constrained. The progression of this bond requires the exclusion of other individuals and is often regulated by complex emotions and jealousy. Lovers often become each others prisoner and neither of the individual is going to be satisfied. Even though most human beings have a conscious understanding of what love can bring, we still choose to love and to be loved.
Love is an existential predicament. As soon as a couple is consecrated with affections, the freedom of each is guaranteed to be constrained. Jean Paul described the problem many years ago, “the lover wants to be loved by a freedom but demands that this freedom as freedom should not longer be free.” Sartres idea of a free unattached individual is idealistic and a more realistic view which recognises that seldom are lovers free, unattached beings, but when lovers fall for each other, they must sacrifice their freedom in order to maintain the relationship. Consider Romeo and Juliet, they were willing to make a sacrifice of their lives. The couple was gifted with a true taste of love, but they did not have the freedom to appreciate the love, taking them to a tragic ending.
Possession is the theme of many relationships. Free beings become prisoners of their own stories. The desire of lovers to possess each other is potentially a self-destructive act. People become metaphorically and symbolically trapped in their own love dreams, they are unable to maintain, improve and forgive, constructing a jail in ones own enchanted dreams. In the painting “The Kiss”, the young lovers are unaware of the complexity in love, the man in this painting finds himself lost