There is a flower going by the name everlasting and yet it is perishable. During its bloom its colorful splendor may entice you to believe in it, that it may win eternity, but alas it will not. Is the hope we place in love just the same? If so, should love not be eternal, then there is no such thing as love. For that which is not eternal, that which is not set aside in blessed independence from time, is always transforming from one state to another. Each interaction leaves it changed, and thus it cannot be. How can the beloved be if changed with each experience? How can love be if feeling in flux?
Consider the beloved. If they were mere brain, defined by the impressions left upon them, then they would be changed with each new stimulus. Every moment would yield a new self. It would thus be senseless to speak of loving them, for just as no man steps in the same river twice, the beloved, as they are, will not be loved again. How irrational then is unconditional love, I speak now of love’s immunity to being changed by wrongdoing, for any new error on the beloved’s part is closer to them than any beauty they have previously manifested. In the absence of eternity, what can this sentiment be except an accidental fantasy? Such irrational feelings cannot have the confidence that comes from changelessness. They cannot find protection from the peril of whim. How then does one not become fiercely jealous, desperate in trying to preserve what cannot be preserved? Such is our plight as those living in an era characterized more so than any other by unbelief in the eternal.
The question at hand concerns our nature. Philosophy begins with a question. Who am I? In modernity it has become increasingly common to believe the negative, that there is no such thing as self. What could be more foolish? By way of love do we not know ourselves and our beloved? Or else, what is loved except an illusion? And what remains to I love you if stripped of knowing the beloved? But does one really know? Can not new love reveal more knowledge yet, like how a new friend reveals a new dimension to oneself? Is not the freshness of love dependent upon mystery? Still, the feeling of being known and of knowing is characteristic of love. Think of yours. Do you not feel like you know yourself in their presence? Is not mutual genuine understanding the great joy of this relation, the feeling of overcoming solitude?
Do we not know our beloved so clearly? We cannot simply say that we have seen them, for how much have we seen? Can we both know and not know them? Perhaps it is possible. Perhaps they are like the sun. We cannot stare through to discover how they are, lest we blind ourselves, but still they are known by their illuminations. Are they not splendid illuminations? Are we not blessed? How terrible it would be to be unknowable, to be confined to an impenetrable solitude! How terrible it would be to be known, to be without mystery! To be known and not known, praise be for this inexplicable perfection! Shall I spurn this faith, this conviction, in my beloved because I cannot discern so clearly? As I sit here gripped by a beauty I cannot help but believe in, shall I bemoan my helplessness in giving her my faith?
Absolutely not! I am quite capable of being deceived, and perhaps I have been, but when love gives forth her fruit so consistently, so magnificently, if only I should listen, how foolish I would be not to trust her! There is a place in the human heart whence love issues forth her commands. When the eye of the mind gazes upon her, appreciative of how readily she can be obscured, is one not filled with a blissful strength? Either I am deceived or I am not, but how judicious and how wise the orders are that flow forth! It is easy to believe in love should you walk in her ways, and just as easy to believe in the beloved should they do the same. So let us believe. Let us believe that even though we see only in part, that this part describes the whole, for it is a beauty too beautiful to be negated by another facet. It is a beauty too beautiful to be dreamt by the deceptive, and thus we shall believe.