The Pursuit of Love
To my wife
For Aristophanes, in the Apology, love is the desire and pursuit of being whole again. The concept of being whole means, for him, becoming what man originally was before. For him, man was originally a composite of two bodies infused into one. But, because of the gods' anger and fear towards man, they divided man into two halves. The original man who is a composite of two bodies, now becomes only a half of himself. Starting from that point onwards, all of us are already born as halves - single bodies - or separated from our original composite. That is why, now, we have the desire to search for our other half - we always feel incomplete being alone. That becomes our new nature. This very desire and pursuit to search for our other half is love. But, finding true love is rare in the world. It is almost impossible to find our real other half amidst the multiplicity of people. Sometimes we settle for fake loves or untrue loves. And this does not give us happiness or completeness - as being whole again. To be able to find our true love, - our true other half - for Aristophanes, we need to ask the gods' help and guidance. It was the gods' who separated us from our true other half, it is also the gods' who will bring us back to them. Then, we may be happy in life - we will be whole again and feel complete.
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