affection

Need

Gift

Give to Need.

Need to Give.

Buying C. S. Lewis' book, The Four Loves, was one of the best things I did this year. In what little of the book I've read already I've begun to understand so much more about myself; things which I intrinsically knew, yet found difficult to define. 

In all honesty, without pride, I do know that my character is such that I'm generally always there when my friends need me, and I don't really expect anything in return. On the surface, perhaps it looks pretty much like I'm giving to a need, and that's that.

But there's more to it. Why my character is such is also because I do feel, rather strongly, a need to be needed, or, in other words, a need to give. Very crudely put, I need my friends to need me. It's somewhat paradoxical, but in a sense, I'm giving to fulfil my own need.

Sometimes, there arises periods of time where I'm not needed. This makes me feel somewhat lost, somewhat unsure of the state of friendship, caught between the happiness of seeing a friend well, happy, yet at the same time being unable to satisfy this need to give.

Like all human loves, this love begins to be a demon when it begins to be a god, as Lewis wisely puts it. We mistake this need to give as evidence that yes, I do love this person by doing this-and-that and that he/she ought to see it and understand.

It gives us an excuse to stand on moral high ground, an excuse to be overbearing and domineering. It stifles the relationship, and the love becomes a source, ironically, for hatred and unhappiness. It becomes a demon, because we treated it as a god.

Yet in its intrinsic nature, it is genuinely humble, genuinely accepting, genuinely honest. There are no airs about it, no hidden motives behind it, no pickiness in the people to whom it presents itself to. It is the most basic and most natural of the loves.

Need?

Gift?

Neither, yet both.

Storge: Affection -- the first love.