RE: 'Soul' Mates Smack Us Awake to Change for the Better
When we speak of the 'violence of love' one aspect of it is this that @krnel discusses. The mirror and interlocutor of the soul-mate does do violence to one's ideal of himself; but in this violence there is not the callousness of raw power or the malignancy of brute force - it is a violence out of and with love for its object and victim.
To distinguish the loving violence of a friend or soul-mate is a feat learned in living together but only if you keep the harsh judgment of your external reflection from boiling into resentment - which is no easy thing, for it requires a diligent cultivation of a rare sanguineness to believe yourself capable of self-improvement and see the positives of your life, when perpetually reflected your worst self-criticisms.
It is difficult enough to live with the constant criticism of Conscience. To find criticism in the external world where you strive in hope of riding your conscience of grounds for reproach by self-improvement, or to cast conscience out of mind through distraction, cannot ever be enthusiastically welcomed. But moreover it is dangerous, since all criticism does harm but only that of goodwill, like a doctor, cuts and bleeds to heal.
Doctors are seldom friends - they are much disliked for the unpleasantness they cause us so to help us; yet in love and friendship what attracts us most is the like salubrious quality of the love's or friend's presence in our lives. As him to us, so we to him are reflections of our ideals helping to guide and spur our moral growth. We both must be true to our ideals in words and deeds and looks if we are to trust one another such as to permit each to do the other harm in order to heal.
Our ideals may differ but what matters is our commitment to mutual self-improvement by this process. Thus, conceivably one can learn to love or be friends with anybody so long as he trusts the other's gracious commitment to the process. Trust, unfortunately, is a difficult thing gained, easily lost, and once lost, impossible to receive again except by an act of love.
Well said :). Except for the word violence, it's not violence as it's not a violation, just as a doctor is not violent when cutting to heal. Truth can hurt in order to bring healing. Trust is hard to rebuild once it has been broken. Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks. There is that connotation, you're absolutely right! That's unfortunate, b/c violence pure and simple describes the clashing of a presumptuous force set against another force. This way of looking at it is how I came up with my view on the matter.
I actually think the connotation of violation is only slightly too strong, b/c the force in question is only not violent whilst it is not accepted. Such is how we know sex and other acts of intimacy. "Violent love" is violent whilst unrequited. "Spurned love" is notoriously ill-humored. And you do not ask, "May I kiss you?," or if you do thus spoil the spontaneity, you spoil also the kiss, the emotiveness of the moment's meaning. Acceptance comes after the fact, comes after the advance, - proposition, - violence; and until accepted (if ever) it is a violation, but once accepted the violence is transformed into love.
[Just for everyone's edification: the word "violence" comes from middle Latin {vim} like the contemporary English word "vim", Latin {ius} meaning use of strength against someone, and an Indo-European root giving the sense of "rape."]