“You cannot love everyone; it is ridiculous to think you can. If you love everyone and everything you lose your natural powers of selection and wind up being a pretty poor judge of character and quality. If anything is used too freely it loses its true meaning. Therefore, …you should love strongly and completely those who deserve your love, but never turn the other cheek to your enemy!”

Without knowing who wrote this quote, I responded to it with the following:  

My greeting and my closing: Always Amor. Reading this above quote, therefore, forces reflection.

I do not doubt the speaker’s passion or authenticity for feeling that way about those who “love,” especially if he is referring to those who emanate a smiling face but in fact do not share genuine love—for true love is tough, just as hate is tough. Love searches for pain and betrayal, just as much as it finds joy. Both concepts of love and hate are, ultimately, illusory to the greater reality of existence. Of course we cannot love all the time, nor can we choose who we think deserves our love, and that is because love is irrational. As Nietzsche states, “Love is beyond good and evil.” Perhaps we should choose only those who deserve our love, but think of the possible consequences of that—I will carve out illusions of who I think I am and search for people who I think are worthy of all powerful me: e.g. you deserve my love because you look like me, you think like me, you laugh at the same insecurities as I do. I think we can already see the problem with this rationale: it builds a fortress around our soul.

Dostoevsky writes an entire novel about Idiot Prince Myshkin who loves too much. In his book, the only place for those who love too much is in an insane asylum! In my novel, Barrio Bushido, El Santo also goes mad from loving too much, and some have interpreted his deviant actions as a consequence of not objectively judging his drug addict parents and immoral homeboys—he stays true to them at the expense of his own life. The speaker of the above quote would call Santo a pretty lousy judge of character; Santo would rightfully deserve his own demise. But Santo did not believe of love as essentially something intended for self-preservation. If love was about self-preservation, then we would be logical about it and care about our survival first and foremost. Love’s essence is based in mystery, but there are some hints to what it is—emotion, raw illogical bleeding red heart drives love. To attempt to tame love is to attempt to tame the universe, and I do not believe I have that capability, except, perhaps, only in my own mind, and, frankly, I do not desire that!

I desire an exploration and a stupidity, a craziness, and a loving; loving always provides me an unrealistic ambition. And I may know it is a lie to believe and write “Always Amor,” but I would love to be so stupid as to believe that lie, instead of the forms of the many other lies we are bombarded with in this world. I choose love because it is hard, and it reveals about me who I think I am. Why am I uncomfortable? Why am I afraid? Loving only those who are closest to us does give us a precise focus, and with precise love, I do understand that much can be accomplished in a seemingly efficient manner. I have tasted the sweetness of watermelon on a sunny day 🙂 At this point in my life, however, I want a more universal force more than my own selfishness. Universal love, I believe, can grant me more creativity, more happiness, more torture, more consciousness than living on my own island, even if that island is paradise.

Always, Always Amor,

Benjamin

P.S. I later found out that the author of the above quote was Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan.

SAINT GEORGE, THE DRAGON SLAYER