"Immature love says - 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says: 'I need you because I love you.'" - Erich Fromm
These days, this quote on love and need has been really centrifuging my mind. Don't know about love being mature or immature in the above quote, yet what is very significantly seen is that whenever it comes to human love, be it mature or immature, the "need" factor always complements or supplements it.
The need for another person, the need of a lover for one's beloved, as man is a social animal, so the need to find a partner for settling in life. This need is what makes relationships thrive and also go astray. The moment you don't need a person in your life, he/she loses his/her significance for you.
That's why break-offs, separations and divorces take place because the need for that all important specific person is replaced by the need for another person who now holds your interest and that's why people enter into re-partnerships and re-marriages.
But of course, living alone is next to impossible as Man is a Social Animal and therefore relationships by virtue of being in a single, committed marital contract or by way of a string of affairs - is what people indulge in...as falling in love and being in love always warrants a need for another person to share one's life.
And I think that God up above might be also lonely and needy like us, and when we talk of human love being need-based, sometimes I feel that God also needs us to remember Him...to feel HIS need in our lives and that's why in our day-to-day living amongst all mundane and routine activities, there are some very precious moments of exuberant jubilation He bestows on us by way of special events like personal or social achievements, and we feel the need to thank Him for his benevolence, to remember Him more in those very happy times, thus fulfilling His need as well - His need to be loved, acknowledged and appreciated by his children on Earth.
And also amongst such diurnal routines, HE sometimes drowns us in abject misery with unthinkable exigencies or failures, because in those very depressing times, we remember God more often and seek His mercy, thus again reiterating this mutual symbiotic need of give and take between God and His subjects - we as humans, seek God in our most trying times and may be, God also makes us endure such times so that we feel His need in our lives.
God gives us the happiest and saddest of our life's moments and we take it all in...
Similarly, in those very positive and very negative times, we reiterate our need of God and our faith in His Godliness, thanking Him in our good times and seeking deliverance in our turmoil - thus we give ourselves unto Him, our belief in His supernatural powers, and He accepts our devotion and prayers, thus His Need to be wanted by His children on Earth is Fulfilled.
A form of Symbiosis - Give and Take.
So I think that the "need" factor is not just limited to the Human Form of Love - we needing to be with the persons we love.
The "need" factor is also very much a part of Divine Love. God's need for us - His devotees and our need for HIM - He the eternal Guru and we His eternal Shishyas (disciples).
Seems like a very holistic form of "Ashram" where in this world, we are born to live and seek refuge in God's Shelter, be it happy times or sad.
Human Love or Divine Love - both exist with similar packages of high and low moments, of pain and pleasure, of exultation and depression, of suffering and deliverance...
And of course, the similarities in seeking and sharing...In our moments of joy and jubilation, we not only feel close to God but also seek our loved ones, our closest allies, be they our parents, friends, partners or children, people who mean the most to us in our lives, and share with them our moments of heightened pleasure. Like the saying goes : Joy shared is Doubled.
On the other end of the continuum, when we are down and out, we not only seek God for some personal solace but also become more dependent and needy of our loved ones, sharing our woes with them, crying on their shoulders, trying to seek some sort of loving comfort in their unconditional support for us. It may be with our partners, our bosom friends or even with our parents and grown-up children, depending on the depth of rapport we share with the pivotal persons in our life. A heart that truly loves can understand a heart in pain...
Yet the one marked difference is the Object of Love - the very visible, "touchable" Man / Woman in your Life as regards Human Love and the always invisible, elusive God Almighty who becomes the ultimate object of your Divine Love - for He annoys and appeases us in His own "special" ways and you feel there is this Uniqueness in HIM that makes him so very surreal and yet so real in our world of Blind Beliefs.
¶ 11:58 AM
