Love and Choice

All emotion is married to action by choice, and only by choice. In all cases, one may choose not to act on a given feeling. While this is fortunately true for the challenges of anger and grief, it also holds for love. A result is that no matter how much one loves another (no matter how much one finds another to be their everything, a reason to exist) one can choose to divorce one’s actions from one’s love.

This cuts both ways. One can love without acting on it when such action would clearly cause pain and destruction (e.g., adultery, when being with the object of the love annihilates the lover’s integrity, etc.). This is the protective way, a way based on the other. One can love without acting on it when one does not know, or too greatly fears the result of acting on the love (e.g., from past pain, doubt, insecurity, etc.). This is the lonely way, a way based on the self.

The obstacle these two ways present is also a duality. On the one hand, no matter how good it may be to leave action and love strangers, it is still unpleasant and painful to leave love inactive. On the other hand, distinguishing between a hesitation based on self and a hesitation based on the other is difficult. It is difficult not only because one can be afraid of and for the self simultaneously, hesitations coexisting, but it is difficult also because want clouds all things. Thus leaving love thwarted is often the hardest thing one may ever do, and the best choice one will ever make.

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