Friendship, Love,
Colleague to Colleague relationship and many other types of
relationships that exists amongst human beings are conditional in
nature. Or symbiotic in nature. Nothing can be entirely altruist in
nature. Not even a mother child relationship (after all, the child is
spreading the genes of the parents ;-))though it is the closest which
appears to be unconditional in nature.
A nice take on
altruism in the TV show House, MD.
(Benjamin –
Patient who is very altruistic: House - A diagnostician : Park and
Adams: Assistant Doctors)
(In the Clinic)
Benjamin: I
started with 10 million, and I couldn't think of a reason not to give
20. Or 40. I figure I could live off $25,000 a year. One-room
apartment. Bus pass, thrift stores. Bare necessities. I still have my
software company. And when I make more, I'll give that way too.
(In
House’s office)
Park: He's nuts.
Adams: He's
generous.
Park: There's a neurological issue. He's getting
rid of everything.
Adams: His echocardiogram is negative
for cardiomyopathy. Head CT showed no signs of stroke or
hemorrhage.
Park: He has one pair of pants.
Adams:
Most people with his kind of money are commissioning oil paintings of
their Yorkshire terrier. Benjamin is sacrificing his own comfort to
help others.
House: That's because helping others is
his Yorkie oil painting.
Adams: That's good. Not
sick.
Park: That's naive and sick.
A
take on conditional love in one of my favorite movie “A”. (Watch
between 54:31 to 1:01:18)
So what/whom am I in
Love with??
I have always
struggled to love the “person” more than the “Idea of a
person”. People often say they are in love with a person
unconditionally meaning irrespective of what happens or changes in
the person, love towards him or her remains unchanged. But in my
understanding, one loves a person for certain characteristics and
those can be anything, persona, attitude, money, looks etc etc etc..
Now these can continue to remain the same or change. Sometimes the
change will have causes which are very reasonable and it never comes
in the way of relationship. Suppose I like someone ONLY for looks
and get married, I can't except the looks to remain the same after 40
yrs ;-) (Also here, my looks would have deteriorated too.. Magically
if I always retained my 20's looks even after 40 yrs, how would I
look at the person whom I have liked only for looks??). The same logic
applies to the character of a person. We like someone else because we
see somethings in them. Either those things should continue to exist
for us to keep liking or if changed, the reason for change should be
justifiable. Random unjustifiable changes always comes in the way of
relationship and rightly so because the relationship was based on
certain desirable characteristics to begin with. Also, what is a
person without the characteristics which one is identified with??
It's just flesh and blood and I find it hard to be eternally in love
with just flesh and blood when the persona is changing.
The above idea is
not always used to judge/evaluate others. It very well applies to
self. I like myself for certain characteristics which I have and
certain other things which I try to posses and so work towards it. If I
fall short in those, I tend to dislike myself for those shortcoming
though the only difference is we tend to have much more tolerance
when it comes to ourselves than others (As in the movie clip, the
protagonist says “We love ourselves more than anybody else.”)
So being
unconditional according to me is a state of mind in which everything
(likes and dislikes) gets equalised and in that state of mind one is
either a saint or dead. Living with some conditional and some
unconditional relationships hasn't come to my comprehension still.
Either every relationship is conditional or everything is
unconditional in nature and I am in the pursuit of “Unconditional Love”.
