Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Selfish or Selfless?


If I do not love me can I love you?

I must admit that in responding to anonymous, my friend anon sista did make me think long and hard on "selfless love".

I've been there. It sucked. I wanted more. So I say no more selfless love for me. I want selfish love. Love that says I love me and I love you. In loving me I am loving you. In loving you, you love me too because I love you and all who love you.

I want to be selfish in love. It proves to me that I value my love. Both that given and that received. Love me as I am or not at all. Love all of me or non at all.
I am me. I always will be.

So anon sista, I feel you...

Selfish love!
I love it.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agreed that one must love oneself first before loving others. The question of self is neither "less" or "ish" when it comes to love, for love is a mutual gift that is a two way give and take.

Shahnaz, I do not believe you were there (regarding selfless love). That experience was not love, but rather selfish domination through intimidation that in the end made no one happy.

You need to experience true love. A love that puts oneself first and their partner alongside them to live life with all its peaks and valleys. A mutual respect that may occasionally compromise in the larger good of the relationship.

You deserve better. So do I.

Anonymous said...

"It proves to me that I value my love. Both that given and that received."

Mashallah Kaki!

..a keen mind will ultimately reject lofty platitudes...the teerooth is liberating...

...and you are miss smarty pants(pic)

Shahnaz said...

@Anonymous

Ahh.. to experience love again... But what to do with the overwhelming panic just before the leap?

Shahnaz said...

@Sista

Teerooth indeed! The teerooth shall set me free...

Anonymous said...

To OMA

…you will not let me say this, so I say it here: I love you….as selfishly as the air that I breathe, as simply as the fact that I am. From the moment we first met and even before, I knew. I know not how, I know not why, but I knew. We are combatants in a battle bitterly fought......because love is not to be trifled with. It is not a feeble stew of liking, attraction, compassion, sympathy, pity and compromise. I don’t understand people loving someone less than completely, obsessively, dominatingly, intimidatingly!

I don’t want just anyone. I want the best. I offer my best! Nothing less will suffice. I can’t stand the people who’ll have me love selflessly….just as…

…I can’t stand undiscriminating “love for humanity”

“The person who loves everyone and feels at home everywhere is the true hater of mankind. He expects nothing of men, so no form of depravity can outrage him….one cant love man without hating most of the creatures that pretend to bear his name. It’s one or the other. One can’t love God and Sacrilege impartially. Except when one does not know that sacrilege has been committed. Because one does not know God.”

I have known God. I feel him in the music in my veins. I feel him in sweltering sand dunes, in raging seas. I feel him in “sunny skies, windy evenings, cheerful laughs”. I feel him in the unbearable love I bear you.

The love that I bear you is the best I can be. I offer you myself/and that which makes me me. I offer you my achievements/and that within me that makes me achieve. I offer you my tentativeness/I offer you my certainty. I offer you my wisdom/I offer you my folly. You are the sinking in the pit of my stomach. You are the singing in my blood. You are the piercing ache, the unfulfillable longing in my heart. I offer you all. You’ll always know it and I’ll never say it. There is no need.

My heart’s delight...my unbearable sweetness of being...my steady rock...the reality of all my posing…..I offer you this moment of weakness.

Shahnaz said...

Ahhh sista!

To have loved and lost. But to have loved.

Consumingly, achingly, obsessively, jealously, dominatingly, selfishly,
discriminatingly, helplessly,

To have loved, loved, LOVED!

Not a care that I lost. Not a care that you're gone. Not a care for care itself.

But To Have Loved...
You...
So...

Anonymous said...

...consumingly...achingly..helplessly...

phewf!
your words top mine.

Anonymous said...

Is it love that makes us sad
and fills our hearts with sorrow?
Or is it the lover you love that breaks
your heart & makes u dread tomorrow?

u can live on these (everyday) things......But How?