unconditional love
i recall a conversation held with someone a few months ago and the topic of actual no-bounds-forever-and-eternal unconditional love came up and whether it was real or not. i mean he had doubts - people who use the term never seem to follow through with the implications - but he was rather hellbent on the idea that loving the same person no matter what they do is somehow the purest form of love. all that says to me is if someone loves me unconditionally, then i have no restraints to what i am able to do with or to this person. it's really more like "pre-conditioned love" than unconditional—what you're saying is you love someone for who they are as opposed to for what they are doing at any particular moment? but then what if they change? what if they become someone other than who they were when you decided to offer them "unconditional love"? (does no one question this?)
i'd just take it in stride, he said. it's still them.
well... what exactly makes up a “them”? what part of them do you love? does it need to be every part in conjunction exactly how it is presented now? what if someone transplanted their brain with someone else's while you weren't looking—do you keep loving the body with the wrong mind because you've closed the door to judgement at the outset? do you fail to love the right brain in the other body, for the same reason? what if the person you grew up with becomes a monster, with little left of their former self? how can you love someone who no longer gives you reason to love them?
you can't expect to feel the same about someone no matter what because if that person you once had is gone, what is left to love? it is merely your imagination, your memory. it simply turns to grief. there is no unconditional love, only averting one's eyes to the conditions.
the truth of it is simply this: don't be superficial or short sighted or blinded by infatuation or ideals. judge fairly - be critical.
judge me. i want to be judged. i will judge you by how you judge, though far more fairly than the so called unjudging judge the judging. do not love me unconditionally, because you do not really love me. if you can't say "i will no longer love you if you stop embodying the things i love", then you have no true love at all, just a placebo of love, a penchant for an idea.
love me for who i am now, for my humor, for my desire for more, for my intellect, for the things i keep hidden, for holding together when others would fall apart, for being too serious when i'm not meant to be or maybe vice versa, for being different, for being a jack of all trades and an ace of two or three, for being so confident and so anxious at the same time, for caring too much about irrelevant things and being apathetic towards the important stuff, for being rational, for being creative, for being yours, for having made myself all of these things, and for judging you, as you judge me, and having the good sense to like what i see in you.
who are you? you, who want to be judged.