ORIT AND I WENT TO THE OPERA RECENTLY

Orit and I went to the opera recently. Once again, we were enthralled by the beauty of one of the most popular operas of all time and one of our favourites, Verdi’s La Traviata.
The music is intoxicating. But for the first time, the story got me thinking. It deals with a traditional Italian-operatic theme, the bitter end to ’undying love’. It should actually be ‘dying love’ because, in the dramatic finale, the tragic heroine, Violetta, dies in the arms of the love of her life, Alfredo, as do the heroes or heroines so often in many operas. Oh! Eterrnal love, denied again to the star-crossed lovers. As a result, I decided to take the risk of expressing my personal outlook on the subject, which I know probably flies in the face of accepted public opinion.
It is not my intention to be controversial. In advance, I plead not guilty. It is simply that I believe that this approach can save many relationships, which may be floundering. It could also add quality to those that are not but where the couple have reached a cease-fire or stalemate.
Probably the most often heard of the many reasons people quote as the cause of a breakdown in their intimate relationship is that it is not what it used to be. It is not fun anymore. The sex is not as passionate nor as frequent as it was. Communication has dried up. Simply said, we are no longer in love. We have fallen out of love.
The problem is that in many cases, they were probably not ‘in love’ in the first place. Perhaps they thought they were. It may have felt like it. It may have even looked like it at times. But that doesn’t mean that they were. They were probably just in effect of the ‘pleasant feelings’ usually experienced at the start of a new romance. In all likelihood, they never ‘fell in love’ although, for example, they may have ‘fallen in lust’.

We have been brainwashed, conditioned to think the Hollywood version of love is the real thing. It is immortalized as such in music, especially in pop songs, literature, opera, poetry and different forms of art, etc. If that idea was the real thing, then love would really last forever. The trouble is that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the relationship can endure, forever, but not the feelings. Fortunately, NO feelings, good or bad last forever. Imagine if it were so. When you feel bad, you would always continue to feel bad. Horrible to contemplate. If you feel good, you would soon take it for granted and it would no longer feel so good. You would probably become bored and the buzz would disappear even more so.

The reason is that human beings are creatures of stimulus-response. In our lives, we are constantly exposed to our environment, the prevailing circumstances as we experience them personally and individually. We automatically react to these conditions through our often unconscious interpretation of them and the stories we tell ourselves about them. Our stories then become our reality. These ideas, thoughts, beliefs, which is all they really are, affect the way we feel. Most of us then behave or act in accordance with the way we feel at any moment, feel bad, behave negatively, feel good, act positively. Since all of this is going on automatically, it is as though we have no control over our feeling or actions.

Actually, we do have complete control, at least over our attitude and therefore, over our behaviour. We are not prisoners of our emotions although they do have a huge influence over us. We have choice as to how to react and what to do in any given situation. Often, it might be in direct conflict with what we may be feeling but nonetheless, we have the option, ‘what to do!’ Racism, bigotry or prejudice are just examples of people accepting their preconceived ideas, never questioning them and acting in accordance with them. The filter through which they experience life is dictated by their beliefs and governs their attitude and behaviour.
Regarding relationships, we fail to make a crucial distinction between being in love and being loving. As I postulated earlier on, in the first case, being in love is dependent on our feelings, which fluctuate, often wildly, as we know. Being loving, though, has nothing to do with those feelings. It is a choice, a commitment to be loving and to act in accordance with that commitment. Loving is a value we choose, which demands from us to behave consistently with our ideas of what it means to be loving. Perhaps, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, in a nutshell.
Obviously, it is easy to be loving when we feel like it. It is far harder to be loving when our entire being seems to be telling us not to. Yet, to form stable, lasting relationships, it is essential to be loving in the latter situation, too, perhaps even more so. It requires the ability to have a sense of humour, to be be fair, to be willing to see the opposite side’s point of view, to be compassionate and above all, to be forgiving. All these are admirable traits, which will make us better human beings, anyway. I will deal with forgiveness in a later blog.

So, when we do not feel in love, it does not mean we cannot be loving and act accordingly any more than when we feel in love, we actually are.

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