How many of you remember sitting in a classroom working on mathematical problems? I imagine most of you can remember this simple moment in life. You may remember it with fondness o for the tedious repetition it took you to understand the fundamentals of problem solving. Like me, I also imagine most of you have occasionally made simple errors in haste and gotten several answers wrong over the course of your education. You probably muttered under your breath, hung your head in shame or clinched your pencil in both hands desiring to break it for the costly error. We’ve all been there!
It’s the simple mistakes that hurt so much because we know if we would have taken a little more time we could have avoided most of them altogether. We didn’t though; we got caught up in the rush and wrote down a wrong number, improper sign or we left something out completely altering the answer. In the process, we suffered by receiving a lower than expected or hoped for grade.
I think about this now as I recall a question a friend posted on Facebook a year or so ago. He asked “can someone be in love with two people equally at the same time.” Many people responded to his query. Most suggested someone can be in love with two people equally. After much thought, I stated they could not because when you are giving yourself to someone, you are leaving the other person without your attention, time or thought. It was something along those lines at least. I received a few “likes” and “love,” but I also garnered some feedback from him stating he believed he could love two women equally simultaneously. I went on about my business never responding again.
Time has given me an opportunity to think about that question on many occasions. I believe I was right in my response then, but now for different and more simplistic reasons. The question was posed improperly; the equation was completely wrong! It should have been put forth in the following manner… Can a person love three people equally simultaneously?
He left himself out of the equation, selfishly and narcissistically. That is human nature at its finest. Most would do the same. It only seems logical that we think of the others because we feel as if we have their interest in mind. We are sharing ourselves with them. They are the beneficiaries. We fail to see and understand our benefits far outweigh theirs. We do not comprehend our love for self because we are too focused on the love we are giving as well as that we are receiving. We become caught up in the moment, the love, the excitement but most importantly, the lust of it all.
Love has a beginning and that beginning is with self. From there, it flows outward to family and friends. Eventually, for most, it continues moving outward with different meaning and we start desiring to express it in more physically and emotionally meaningful ways. That doesn’t change when someone else catches our eye. We must take the necessary steps to woo them to win them over as well. When we do, we must pull that same kind of deep meaningful emotional love from somewhere. In reality, we pull it from two places.
We pull it from our self and we pull it from the initial object of our affection. In doing so, we actually cheat three people in the process. We cheat our self by taking from us the opportunity to deepen our current relationship; we cheat our initial love by taking from her emotion, physical intimacy and time, and we cheat our intended by robbing them of knowing we are promised to another. Love will not live in a house built on lies and untruths. That is where lust resides.
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