On Eros and Lust

The Symposium by Socrates has always and will always be a source that I delve into as I thread the sometimes unfamiliar and raging sea of love. Plato, the expert that he was, clearly illustrates to us that although a beautiful feat, eros can also be a calamitous journey of the heart, the mind, the body.

He shows us the total peace and the superfluity of all else when at the peak. Simultaneously, he shows us the obsoleteness felt while in the “valleys of the shadow of death” and uncanny elements of this eros when you have found the piece of your soul that wandered without you and you yearned so much for.

Inevitably, a story of love is in essence a story of beauty and tragedy—a conglomeration of peaks of happiness and plummeting falls of excruciating pain. How can the two go together? How did eros become ambivalent? How is all this possible?

In reality, there is a distinction between love that is honourable and that which is dishonourable. Love should not be ambiguous but rather has clearly defined lines that speak of the consistency of the souls of the two people attached to each other.

If eros begins with love of virtue and love of the soul and the mind, attachment will prove to be beautiful, good—eros will initiate an everlasting bond without dark and deep valleys. Instead, the journey will prove to be undulating. The destination together is no longer the focus nor is who you will become; rather, who you are and would like to be with your soul mate.

If eros would begin first with mature unions, calamity will be avoided—estrangement, fear, emotional impairment will not flood your path. There is one true love, just as there is a true form of beauty and just as goodness is objective and can be easily distinguished from things unlike itself.

Young love desires to quench insatiable appetites. Young love. It is wandering, unattached and resembles lust. It goes after what appears desirable and when this is achieved seeks the next most opulent fleeting thing.

Love of the mind, of virtue, of goodness and all that is beautiful is mature love, lasting love, freeing love, respectful love, harmonious, florid and unconditional. This love can only BE when appetites are quieted compatibility is achieved and evil cut off.

How can you hold on to the beauty of mature eros with evil in your heart, darkness hidden away, the past buried and trust hanging on a foundation made of mire?

To gain this beauty— trust, hope, forgive, innocence, share light, expose, be wise, and exude the peace of God that should live within your heart. Eros dwells in the gentleness of a pure and contrite soul and can only find the like in the same and not the contrary.