A Sermon on Love. It is a wonderous journey of thought…
By: Tuan Muhammad Hanif Tuan Ab Hamid
Tags: Sermón, Thoughts And Feelings, Love, Essay, Ramblings

It is a wonderous journey of thought, the existence of humans up to this point. Survival nature has been credited for our inheritance of longevity as a species. Darwin and his contemporaries have fended this with eloquence and abject proof, through rigorous experiments and observations. This is to not be argued against. Humans by nature, and instinct will sought after their own existence’s legitimacy and its continuation, and with that, its progeny as well. We will always have an affinity towards preservation; a by-product of our survival instinct.

A flame does not conjure itself. Under it, lies a reason for existence. Albeit coupled with some heat induction, the burning only occurs when there is a source; firewood, paper, twigs, leaves, you can substitute these with appropriate examples, and you will find that the fascination is with the fire, yet its life is dependent on the fuel. For such marvel which enchanted our ancestors, and propelled humanity to a new plane of existence, was kept alive by its fuel. Our mind comprehends the pertinence of burning materials, and labored for it, but our senses have always been captured by the embers of the dancing flame and its heat. However, this duality is not distinguished, it stems from a human characteristic, to labor and then to reap. It is then, as significant as the flame, is the act of fueling the fire.

The fuel for humans’ existence then, in my personal experience, is love. Yes. A four letter word more often found in passionate literature and other avenues deemed “unimportant” or maybe even “irrational” every time it is summoned in important and urgent writings, or in weightful conceptions of life and purpose. This four lettered word, or maybe several characters’ long in other languages, is as embedded in us as our skin is to our body. It is the very fabric that glues our existence in life, and it is the very fuel for our existence.

You see, humans, upon experiencing a phenomena in this world, will always resort to love for, or love against it. It is a neurotic mechanism which informs our decision-making with staunch sentiments so that we veer away completely from harm reliably and attend to beneficial activities habitually. Stumbling upon a pleasant herb or plant, have created a love for it, expressed in recipes and ointments. Eating a poisonous mushroom created a love for cure and medicine to cast the harm of the mushroom away. The love for freedom made us adventurers, strolling up and down the continents, and the fear of danger translates into our love for settlements and homes. There is not a single thing a human does, without love as its fuel. Of course, one would not be declarative about their sentiments every single time they labor in an affair; love needs not a body to exist in. It is the very body in which you reside in. It is the muscles contracting voluntary and involuntarily, the constant mind-focus on a single matter, the disappointment in failure yet hopeful for another try; this is love. In carpentry or poetry, even in laboratory or the open fields, love guides us all the same.

Modern understanding of love is as defiled as the industrial revolution which bloomed in the 17th century; we are focused on the products of love. Love became, like its contemporaries in the age, a commodity. Love was not seen as a seed that can grow a big tree and a deep root, while over time flowering and fruiting redundantly throughout the seasons. Love was inquired of its flowers and fruits only. Whoever can offer the most fragrant of flowers and sweetest of fruits, will be deemed by merit, deserving of affection. No one is nursing love from seed, one water can at a time. Therefore we are taught or rather, we are impressed by the fact that love is in all things manifest; from overwhelming, suffocating gestures to unrelenting expression of drowning metaphors, elongated relay of affection through vain actions and many more. These are all only petals and husks, and only these, nothing more. It is detached from its essence of existence. It will rot in acceleration upon leaving the tree. It can move from one hand to another, and sometimes, it can be in three pair of hands simultaneously, unbeknownst to the receiver. Love is no longer a continuous, conscious, single-minded affair. Love is no longer in the nails which worked the soil. It is no longer the drenching cloth from the streaking sun. It is no longer the distance you keep in your sleep, because you know to love is to labor, and labor also necessitates rest, although not indefinitely. It is now to be sold to the highest bidder with the most convincing bid and to be taken home, and to be put in a display case, claiming glory as scribed in old love proses; a shameful act.

This is the precarious condition of love in the modern era. Love towards a craft is defined to produce a certain quantity of products. Love towards an art means to spend fortunes on its materials and its artworks (from here, the wealthy merely acquired a taste of art, but not its craft, which only made them look a fool). Love towards a partner compels a person to give everything: heart, body, soul, wealth and more, until none is left for himself. Then, he would find what he lost in another, and then rekindled the same (false) feeling of love, and then gives everything away again until he respites love. In another rendition, a man who can provide everything as modern perception of love warrants, feels no weight in regards to love, as they can provide anything the lover demands from him. This lack of excitement will cause the man to lose any valuation towards love. This loss will implicate not only the lover, but the man himself and his trust towards love and its workings. Consequently he sees no beauty, no value and no use in love and all its wonderful companions. Both men are now in despair, and a despaired man is a dead man, and the world is not fit for the undead, even in soul. Love of the right configuration will not kill a man. It elevates the man into immortality, even if in memory, or in the grandeur of erected statues and monuments. The visible acts of love are stringed from the labor one puts in nursing from the very first sprout. Love is in the labor, not the produce.

One should have the ability and capacity to love in their own measure, and find the measurable purposes in order to live peacefully without holding their own love against another’s. One plot of land can unearth many different plants. Look inside one’s desire and heart to answer which plant should one seed. One should also identify falsehood in paraded love in the media, as these are a puppet used to enchant the masses, whose hands only searches for more coins in people’s pockets. Love should be inward, and then gradually projects itself unto the world, like planting a seed, its sprout seeketh a path out of itself into the sun. Under it, it learned division and becomes parts of differing sizes and shapes, from branches, to twigs, and then leaves before flowering and fruiting. This tree is then, is the true manifestation of the seed. Its undiscovered potential. Its best and glorious form. This is what love should be like. The tree will then awe the pretty bees and butterflies as company, and birds will sing their day hymns on the branches. Once it becomes its best self, it attracts other beauties. Just as each tree in a forest is different, so does love for every person. Yet they all stand stall, equally magnificent in form.

Love is in everything we do, it is the cloth which covers our naked body and enable it to withstand the harsh world and its weather. It is not a prize, or an ornament. It is to be lived with, in every face of the world; the beautiful and the ugly. Know that every labor for love becomes a part of you. It is meant to be integral to our existence. Love is the reason for our existence. We are the flame, and in this labor, we ought to make ourselves eternal. One who diminishes his own fire will need to rekindle their own flame, and regrow their desire for love. Only when we burn bright, we cast a light on the world. The finality would be our return to His glorious light, and be united under the same heaven, again.