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Dr Martin Luther King Jr gave one of the finest reflections and exposés on this sticky thing called love. Most of us are unable to see it beyond self-focused attention. We experience a vague emotional energy and call it love. According to Kingian thought, when we hear the word ‘love’, we want to refract other people’s positive energies towards ourselves. We seek contexts in which we see them pampering us, making us feel good, as a factor of being spoiled.
The Rev Joan Brown Campbell was one of the people who walked with King and sat at his feet. She would go on to remember him as one “who disrupted (the) careful orders of life that preserved privilege and special status.” Love is itself often a privilege and special status affair. This is especially so where it is interpreted in narrow romantic corridors, instead of broader social love that creates what Dr King called “the beloved community.”
Is it possible even to think of a beloved community, let alone to create one? King’s starting point was a biblical exegesis of the Christian text where Christ asked his followers” to love their enemies.” In this season of Valentine, with overflows of romantic passions, is it possible to think of the possibility of “loving our enemies”?
Where do you even begin? This is precisely the question that King asked in 1954, at the Dexter Avenue Church. Borrowing from earlier great thinkers, he sought to deconstruct the notion of love. He wanted to show that it was possible to create a beloved community. We are mostly governed by sensual passions that flower in private spaces. But, beyond this, it is still possible to reflect on the beloved community as a part of our collective philosophy of life.
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Instructively, President Daniel arap Moi’s initial years in office invoked love in the context of his Nyayo Philosophy of love, peace and unity. This writer was a young post-adolescent, who joined other brass youngsters in laughing away triple alliance of the Nyayo Philosophy. We guffawed hilariously with the levity of thoughts about oversupply of love in the country. We said that you could even buy the surplus of love in houses of less than average mortals, where the price was a dime.
Puerile levity aside, great minds invite us to reflect beyond the vagueness of erotic romanticism. We are invited to go beyond the pining of lovers romanticised in world literature. Set aside Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Tess of the D’Urberville and other romantics that Thomas Hardy created in The Return of the Native, Far from the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure and The Mayor of Casterbridge.
We have to put aside Shakespeare’s Desdemona, Cleopatra, Helena, Perdita, Ophelia, Miranda, Hermione, Rosalind and the lot. Love must begin being appreciated through higher Platonic prism that Dr King revisited in his 1954 sermon. Accordingly, Greek uses at least three key words to understand love. There is eros, philia and agape.
Eros is where most of us will easily be found and remain. At this crossroads, we are caught up in a burst of desirous energy. The vitality is driving us to desire and to feel desired. It is best expressed as a certain kind of yearning. Both King and Plato think that in eros the human soul craves to be admitted to the realm of the gods. They see that the outcome of this yearning as what manifests in romantic love.
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Beautiful thing
Romantic love as eros is a beautiful thing. To paraphrase Wole Soyinka in the play The Lion and the Jewel, “Our hearts burst into flowers with our love.” Or better still, “Romance is the sweetening of the soul, with fragrance offered by the stricken heart.”
Accordingly, we seek to find the one individual that we like and love. In that powerful beauty, we want to pour ourselves into the soul of that individual, while they pour themselves into us. If we are rejected, we are dejected. We go into low moments of self-pity. Especially, we get jealous at the thought that someone else has been admitted into that very special space that has rejected us.
Does love then begin sitting just a block away from vile and poisonous thoughts? Tragedies that have universally happened in love triangles say it all. Here in Kenya, young people are finding it difficult to manage themselves where their romantic passions are not reciprocated. A young lady may no longer reject advances from a young man and remain safe!
Is it still love when it must be harnessed with threats and exposure to mortal danger? If she must walk with you, or face the grave, are you still in the province of Platonic eros? There are many men who have kept many a beautiful woman in their dominion, through the power of fear and brutal force. They may even attempt to pour tons of material inducement upon the object of their difficult love. Yet they still fail to flip on the flame of love.
If you really loved her, you would let her fly away in such situations. You would allow her to find true happiness elsewhere, through giving to someone else that which you so badly yearn for, but which she is not able to give you. For, Thomas Hardy has told us in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, “The man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say "See!" to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to a happy doing; or reply "Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game.”
Hence, Hardy goes on “The wrong man ends up with the wrong woman; the wrong woman, the man.” It has always been so and always will be so, he says. Those caught up in wedlock will have marriage in the cabin, while their passions often reside elsewhere. Society itself puts in place social chains that contain the pursuit of fulfilment of the thrust of such passions.
Philia, another beautiful realm of love in Greek definition, brings together people to enjoy each other’s fellowship without exploding into romance. It is a reciprocal relationship that works like a dual carriageway. Unlike erotic passions that may not be answered, philia is felt all round. You therefore have the kind of friends that will go out for coffee with you without further strings. It is the love we find in families.
Love gets to another domain, often considered higher than erotic love. You don’t just love that person. You like him without carnal disruptions. And he likes you the same way. There are many people whom we love, but whom we also don’t like. In point of fact, there are some things we don’t like about people whom we love! It may be the way they che, when eating; or the way they snore in their sleep. Liking is very special, contrary to what many people tend to think. When someone likes you, they admit you into a very special place. To like and love is heavenly.
In this writer’s perception, liking is the doorway to Plato’s third realm of love – which he has called agape. Dr King recalls Platonic agape as a profound form of love that seeks nothing in return. Theologians understand this to be a godly love. It is an understanding love that rolls on the wheels of goodwill towards everybody.
Agape love
A person who has understood agape will slow down for you in the traffic. He understands that even the poor pedestrian has a right to use the road, even if that right only goes as far as crossing. He will not sway out of the way at fast speed, just so that he denies a lonely car the space to join the traffic from a side road. He does not jump the queue, hoot harshly and unnecessarily, or rush to beat the next motorist for the next parking space. Each beat of his heart flows with universal milk of love that sits at the soft centre of his good soul.
Philosophers who believe in God and in universal goodness understand that those who gain agape have risen to a loving level that is divine. They love people not because they deserve to be loved. They love, instead, because they see God’s own love in everything that he has created. Accordingly, the beloved community could flower from such love.
It is a just community. Even such notions as love, peace and unity become possible, for at the core is universal justice. We are just to people not because they are our friends, or relatives, but rather because everyone deserves fairness. There is equality before the law and equal access to opportunities. Such is love in action, way beyond temporary erotic appetites that pass on like a bright fire of straws. True love burns like smouldering coals. It is silent, long-lasting and profound. It is the love that Paul of Tarsus spoke of when he said, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
“It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
[The writer is a strategic public communications adviser]
