Oct 31 2011
What’s love? And what’s desire? Can they be the same?
We had a brilliant discussion, the 4 of us. Peppered with stories of fasting in restaurants and the Loch Ness monster (and a little bit of icecream, but that never leaves the table), we tried to find out if love and desire could be the same. Many words were spoken, but maybe this sums up best what my thoughts were at the end.
‘Desire’ is to want. The purest meaning there is. It is what you want and it is blind to the idea of whether it is good or bad for you. Desire for wealth, desire for success, desire for happiness, desire to kill, desire to be respected, desire to take what others have. They are all desires, and can be good or bad for you. Following your desire is for the purpose of making your ego and self feel more fulfilled.
But love! ‘Love’ is to want what is good for another, to want to please them. “Ah!“, you say. “Isn’t that a want as well?“. It is, but here is where love differs from desire. First, it is only to want something good for another. If you loved someone, you would want their life to be good, you would want to please them and make them happy. If you loved yourself, you would want what is good for yourself (believe me, there are people who want the worst for themselves. Those people DON’T love themselves). If you loved Allah, you would want to please Him. Do you see a theme here? The purpose of love isn’t to fulfill your own self, but to fulfill another’s. It is for them, not for yourself.
What’s ‘good’?
If you look back above, the word ‘good’ is mentioned a thousand times (ok, I might be exaggerating… a little). But what does good mean? Because there are probably a thousand ways to define what is good and bad, depending on situation and context. Again, I’d like to take the simplest meaning, because I don’t like complicated words. Good here, is defined by Islam. It’s defined by what Allah passed down to us, it’s defined by what the prophet said to us, it’s defined by what the Qur’an has shown us. ‘Good’ is what Allah says is good.
So then, to love someone, is to want to bring them closer to God, because we want what is best for them.
The story of man
All the above is especially troubling for man, because we have a nature in ourselves, a nature to want to sacrifice and give and give to make another person’s life better. We want to love. We need to love. We need to love. When we don’t look further than ourselves, and only care about our inner desires, something dies within us. We become smaller beings for it. It’s only when we look further out that we can become part of something bigger than ourselves, and this is where we grow.
And it’s troubling because when we love, we care. We care about something other than ourselves now. And we have no way of knowing what the other is thinking, what the other really wants (which is different when it’s only about yourself. At least we think we know what we want). And it stays like that unless the other party tells us what they want.
//The following is stolen from my dad (the purpose of prophets):
So what happens when man, in his nature, looks for God? We always have. We want and need something to worship. From idols to nature (pagan religions) to science, these are all gods that man has had to fulfill his need to believe in a higher power. What? Science is a god? Yes it is, the god of the atheists. *gets sidetracked* Just because science is a god of the atheists doesn’t mean that Islam doesn’t accept science. Rather, science is still the creation of Allah. In the same way that the sun and moon are creations too that other people have worshipped before. *end sidetrack*
When we find God, the ultimate being, we are… lost. Lost! After following the signs in nature, and understanding that there is an ultimate being that created everything, we then decide to worship him and do what He asks of us. But we don’t know what He is asking of us now, do we?
Well, we wouldn’t unless Allah told us how to worship him. And that’s why the prophets were sent down, to be the link to humanity. To bring the message of how to worship Him and do what He asks. He tells us, explicitly!, what is good and bad, what He wants and doesn’t want, what we need to do to worship and give thanks to Him. Without this conduit, the prophets, we wouldn’t know what He wants. Even if we loved Him, we wouldn’t know how to love Him.
//End stolen from dad.
And that’s part of the beauty of Islam, to me. That by giving us prophets, we are given all these ways to worship him. Those rules aren’t to restrict, they are to give opportunity to repay His love and mercy.
Love and desire can come together
When you love someone, you also desire them. That desire has a selfish component. Even when that desire is to make them happy, by making them happy you feed your ‘self’ by thinking, “I’m good at making this person happy“. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Desire is an integral part of humans and should be there. But as Khair says, when the desire overpowers the love, that’s when the problems creep up slowly, unnoticed. Whatever you do then becomes a process of me, me, me. I’m good at making you feel better, I’m good at doing this for you, I’m good at sacrificing for you.
This shift of focus makes you more and more detached. You forget to check for feedback from that very same person. You forget to ask if she/he really is happier with what you are doing more of. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. But as the mentality becomes about yourself, you forget reality. You focus on those few things and your whole world then revolves around your few desires. Those are the only things you desire, and therefore they’re the only things important to you.
So it’s important to check back once in a while. The other person might like what you’re doing, but are you doing this for them? Or are you actually doing it for yourself? Be honest. The answer might surprise you. I know it’s surprised me sometimes.
Not just for mere mortals
It’s not just for mortal relationships. It’s also true for your relationship with God. When your desires overpower your love for Allah, you start doing things for your own sake. Praying to feel more religious, wearing a kopiah (kufi) to feel more pious. It’s to make you feel better. I’m not saying that everyone is like this, but some of us are, and sometimes, I’m afraid I might be too.
When you do it for your own sake, instead of for Allah, then you start to pick and choose. You don’t do everything that He tells you to. You do the ones that you feel are worthwhile, because the story is all about you now, isn’t it? When the focus is truly Allah, then you do everything He tells you to. He’s already told you which ones are worthwhile (wajib), why are you overruling Him?
Listen closely
And that’s what I mean for human relationships. When the focus is yourself, you stop listening to the other side. And you mess it up. If you really love the other person, listen to them. Listen closely. Perhaps they love you back.
P.S. Thanks to @syazwinasaw, @khairhamzah, @lubnaaa for the info in this post. And of course, my dad.
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