Existential study of love
My existential study of love continues. This time I am accompanied by the philosopher Alain Badiou in his ‘In praise of love’:
“Provided it isn’t conceived only as an exchange of mutual favours, or isn’t calculated way in advance as a profitable investment, love really is a unique trust placed in chance. It takes us into key areas of the experience of what is difference and, essentially, leads to the idea that you can experience the world from the perspective of difference.”
In a social world dressed up by identities and the search for likeminded, my heart beats a little faster when I read Badiou’s words. Yes, thank you. Love in its different manifestations is an exploration of differences, of the perspective of difference. Somehow, when we commit to the experience and expression of love, we commit to the creation of a shared destiny, even though this destiny does not mean we share the same identity. And as we know, one of the hardest things, one of the ways love is also ongoing ‘emotional work’, is the active acceptance of creating a life together while being different together.
This also touches upon the question whether one can fall in love with the experience of being gifted. Really leaning into this question, I sense this has a lot to do with accepting the diverse ways in which we can be gifted, with (funny enough) looking at the world from the perspective of two, seeing difference as the starting point for our personal research on (not into) giftedness. This may sound strange, because often enough we project a search of belonging upon each other, and while doing so tend to reduce our differences and emphasize particular similarities while leaving out those parts that feel uncomfortable or threatening. But that may not be the most loving way to embrace giftedness. Someday soon we may find out our conceptions of giftedness had a lot of blind spots and little space for unconventional growth.
Badiou again:
“Love… is a quest for truth… truth in relation to something quite precise: what kind of world does one see when one experiences it from the point of view of two and not one? What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of difference and not identity? That is what I believe love to be.”
How can a recognition of giftedness be a stimulus to search for deeper, positively maladjusted existential truths? Can we mirror each other’s giftedness and let that be an invitation for everybody to explore their unique ways of being human? Is it possible to co-create a field of gifted awareness while not reducing our developmental complexities and intensities along the way?
The practice of love, as Badiou writes convincingly, is a search for truth. Seeing reality for what it is, not for what a thirst for identity demands. What about fully embodying giftedness, embracing its fluid character and its potential expansion into forms, relationships, creative processes, and worlds we haven’t occupied or even imagined yet? If love would lead the way, we may find out that our ‘truthful selves’ diverge in magical, colourful ways.