by Harmony Levin
“If one wants to love and open up his or her heart to humanity the first step is in expressing compassionate love”
My name is Harmony Levin, I am a speaker and social commentator; basically, I am gifted in the art of reading and writing, and I am a lover. I will like to give a “toast” to as many who go out of their way to love, and in doing so I’d explain my perception of this thing called love.
I want to start off by attempting to give my perception of what love truly is – to me love is the reason for our being, it is the only human virtue which I think everyone possesses irrespective of whether such person has a stone for a heart. Life is a complex form of a jigsaw puzzle with hardly any user manual on how to fix it up. Upon birth life systematically but gradually unveils itself to us bringing us with the very reality of ourselves. Fortunate are the few who are able to fix up this jigsaw puzzle of life; most unfortunate is the great masses that have not come around to understand this complex life.
In all the complexities of life, one thing stands out, which is the ability to love – and love itself is also a complex virtue of life, for in talking of love one would need to state it in its varieties. But I have decided to narrow love to its compassionate nature towards other humans.
Compassionate love is the realest form of love because it brings out the true humanity in us and it involves loving others, empathising with others and honouring others in their successes and flaws. In trying to understand the concept of compassionate love, I will use the popular phrase that says “love your neighbour as yourself” – the common interpretation of the phrase is that one ought to love one’s neighbor fully to attain compassionate love. But I always beg to disagree with that interpretation; I would rather that to attain compassionate love in the context of the phrase one would need to attain full lovability of one so as to be in the right place to “love your neighbour”. This is what in recent times is called self-love.
I will like to state that the conundrum on the concept of self-love is far from over as it is now a matter of different strokes for different folks. Pessimists will say it is a coinage of “selfish love” – but I do not believe that love, in whatever form, should be defined by society, religion or whatever. When to love, who to love, how to love should be the exclusive decision of the lover to make.
In summary, I would like to mention the popular love tales of the dog who died while trying to save a group of kids from snakes or the hen who will risk her life to protect her chicks from any danger. Every human has this undying ability to love in them. If one wants to love and open up his or her heart to humanity, the first step is in expressing compassionate love. It is via compassionate love we learn how best to forgive, how to be there for others and how to love in spite of barriers. Cheers!
*excerpts from a speech given at a young people’s forum.
Harmony Levin(20) is a writer, speaker and social commentator. An undergraduate student of the University of Uyo, studying History and International studies, a feature writer and editor of Diplomatic Access. A creative director and idea innovator, with high stakes in literature, lifestyle and religion. He is on Twitter as @mactorrr
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