By Mohammad Shouman | Junior Editor

The painter sits still and watches their canvas conceive itself; an invisible hand paints the severed edges of their strokes, blurs the lines of their horizon, and sharpens the leaves of the trees once merged into a conglomerate of earthy hues from the welling of their tears on the canvas grooves. The hand comforts the swollen heart of the painter by easing blood away from the center of their troubles onto the tips of their fingers; it pushes their nails away from between their quivering teeth and onto the brush whose end is marked with bites of great focus at times and unwavering anxiety at others.

Self-love comes at a cost. It lives in a reality wherein the above scene could be eternally absent and is abused as a buffer against dwelling in the absurd loneliness of human life. It pushes one into the belief that they are worthy of so much love, admiration, and respect to the point of thinking that losing a person is a sign not of their own discombobulated encephalon, inflated ego,

and conflicted interests, but of non-existing standards set on the other. It makes one a machine that takes people as fuel and spits out a slurry of reasons why one deserves better.

What do you deserve? Is the honest-to-God person who listens but does not interrupt, makes a living by adding value to their community, takes good care of themselves, is genetically blessed in both physical and intellectual ways, serves as a protector of their family, and loves you endlessly someone you think you will meet? And if you do, is it someone you will have the capacity to love? Finally, is it someone who will love you, even more so, someone who must love you, as you so inherently deserve?

The machine takes this ideal person and operates on them in two contradictory modes. On the one hand, it absolves them of any need or responsibility to exist, since love comes from oneself and not from others. There is no fundamental need for this Übermensch to roam the streets of the city in search of the lover, for the lover is satisfied with the love that stems from their own heart, flowers into trees, and oxidizes, seeping sweet nectar into their mind. It then vaporizes and condenses on the cold remains of empathy in their vocal cords, pouring back drop by drop into the heart to reset the cycle. On the other hand, it forces this ideal person to remain forever bound by the iron bars of the lover’s constantly constricting emotional fountain. Standards are set not by what others can provide but on what one is so confidently entitled to, and when others make mistakes, show weakness, or fall out of love, standards rise in an inflationary manner. But there are no gold reserves to back up or stabilize the currency of emotions and no government bonds or long-term Roth IRA accounts to cash in upon retirement, for the heart and the mind cannot retire from the “market” of love. As a matter of fact, they cannot survive without it.

Can you deserve love? Do you have the right to believe that the ideal, set up by you, is really for you? Even if you do, can you not see that this ideal can never exist but can only grow desperately and exceed the borders of the reality in which you feed on self-love? The contemporary philosopher Slavoj Zizek has an interesting perspective: “This proverbial boring questioning of a man from a woman, ‘Tell me, why do you love me?’ is a very good question, because there is no answer to it. The paradox is that the moment you can answer it is by definition, not love.” It reveals that by attempting to categorize and marginalize love, one deprives themselves of it all together. Furthermore, by sticking to the mantra of loving oneself, sabotage becomes an easy if not inevitable path to stumble upon. Clearly, the motive is innocent, and the goal is to better one’s standing in society, among peers, and most importantly, internal to themselves. However, by abstracting these high walls and building barbed wires atop them to push away the love that does not match the self’s own, one amplifies the loneliness that they so desperately craved to overcome.

Love and do so with no hopes of the wires connecting your souls to be pulled taught. Love with no fear of untangled threads from ends cut loose, of canvases on which your images enthusiastically commenced yet abruptly terminated, of lonely nights, or of loss and stagnation. It takes effort to accept the subtle absurdity in what defines human relationships and the critical moments that maintain them, but fear is an obstacle that fogs up the required recognition. To love and to do so elegantly is not unknown, as I end with an excerpt from Gibran Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet:”

“Then Almitra spoke again and said, ‘And what of Marriage, master?’

And he answered saying:

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

Sources: 1. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rZv5F-e7ghU 2. https://www.kahlilgibran.com/