Paul Messam, Contributor
I AM DESCRIBED in many ways. I am like flame that cannot be hid. I am hot, deep burning and unquenchable. I am a prevailing breeze in the land of the youth. I cannot be forced, axed or teased. When bitterness imprisons life, I release it. When it paralyses life, I empower it.
When bitterness sours life, I sweeten it. When bitterness sickens I heal it.
I am also described as the highest and most intense expression. Some say I am complex and many do not understand me.
Aristotle suggests that anyone wishing to understand me should use our 'model' relationship; by which to measure, compare and contrast other relationship. It is the attachment that exists between friends who are more or less equal in development and who are joined by common values, common interests and by mutual admiration.
LOVE RELATIONS
Stories of passionate love relations between men and women exist throughout our literature and are a treasured part of our cultural heritage. The great love affairs of Lancelot and Guinevere, Heloise and Abelard, Romeo and Juliet are symbols of physical passion and spiritual devotion. Nathaniel Brandon from his book The Psychology of Romantic Love states, "the concept of love as an important value and the idea of it as a passionate spiritual attachment, based on mutual admiration ... was conceived as a very 'special' attachment". According to Brandon, love is, in the most general sense, our emotional response to that which we value highly.
"To love is to delight in the being whom one loves, to experience pleasure in that being's presence, to find gratification or fulfilment in contact with that being".
