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Kaleb Tucker

Professor Diehl

HUMN-2010

17 April 2022

Love: The Crux of Human Existence

I think it is safe to say that most people want to experience love in one way or another.

Whether it be familial love, love shared between friends, or romantic love, something inside of

human’s desires love. Love is a tricky thing though. Just as quickly as love can bring happiness,

it can bring heartbreak. Love is capable of touching the deepest part of your soul, and can leave

fond memories, or deep scars. It is quite strange that one force can lead to such drastically

different outcomes, and it begs the question how. Love itself is not the issue, but rather what

others do with it, and how each of us chooses to interact with it. Two polarizing examples of love

are 1 Corinthians 13 and the poem “Before you Came” by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The former

describes what love in its pure form looks like, while the latter illustrates the consequences of an

unhealthy relationship with love, and in drawing from both of them, it becomes clear that love

has the potential to leave a lasting impact on our lives for better or worse. How fitting, as love

just may be at the core of our existence.

Love can influence a person’s life in immensely strong ways, and because of this it is

important to know the signs of healthy love. The nature of love is hard to describe and fully

articulate, however, 1 Corinthians 13 does a really good job describing the characteristics of

love, and thusly the characteristics found in a loving person. This passage in the Bible describes

love as patient, kind, forgiving, and enduring through all things. These are characteristics that
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someone seeking a healthy relationship should look for. There are not love languages specifically

seen in this passage, instead it focuses on the deepness of pure love. The author, Paul, states that

without love, everything else in this world is worthless. It is not just any kind of love; however, it

is love that is patient, kind, and enduring. I believe that Paul understood the potential for others

to misuse and manipulate love in order to weaponize it, and this highlights the importance of him

describing what pure, healthy love looks like. The passage overall has this feeling of agape love,

yet I think the core of the message can be applied to several types of Greek love, such as eros,

storge, philia, pragma, and philautia love. Another key component here is that Paul begins the

passage with explaining how priceless love is, and he ends it by declaring that when everything

else in this life fades away, love will remain. This element drives home how important it is to

find pure love, and perhaps to pour pure love out onto others ourselves.

Love in its purest form sounds really great. Unfortunately, though, humans are not always

one hundred percent pure. People are imperfect and make mistakes. Sometimes bad days make it

harder to be patient, kind, and to endure. Due of human’s imperfection, love is not always as it

should be. Many things can create a toxic situation, such as a lack of love, a one-sided

relationship, or a person looking for the validation of love through other means. Each of these

typically have bad outcomes. In contrast to the pure love Paul describes in 1 Corinthians, the

poem “Before you Came” by Faiz Ahmed Faiz seems to depict what happens when one has an

unhealthy relationship with love. The poem has an interesting structure, and it begins with Faiz

describing how his existence was fairly mundane before this mystery person, or thing, came into

his life. After this first verse, Faiz switches gears and begins painting a vivid picture of his new

existence. The poet seems overwhelmed with this new world he has been thrust into. He speaks

of the mystery entities absence as a sad occurrence and writes of their meeting passionately but
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the whole verse has this feeling of desperation and hollowness (Faiz). To me, it does not feel like

the love Paul describes. The love depicted here seems like a weird mixture of eros and ludus

love, however it does not feel authentic. I think the poet lacks philautia love, and this entity takes

advantage of this, overwhelming him with inauthentic love. The consequences of this are the

author being hooked on this rollercoaster. He wants this entity to stay and seems more focused

on learning to live in his new world with a shred of hollow love, rather than learning how to first

love himself.

At first glance, these pieces do not seem to connect whatsoever. I will agree they are in

stark contrast to each other. I think it was important however to first analyze what love should

be, and then look at what can happen when imperfect humans get a hold of a force as powerful as

love and do not handle it in a healthy way. While they have their stark differences, there are a

few similar aspects. These two pieces of literature both speak of love, and both show the

consequences of investing in the type of love they describe. Also, both have signs of the Greek

type of love known as philautia, or self-love. They also have their differences. In Paul’s letter, he

describes pure love, and talks about how this love will endure, even after all else fades away. In

Ahmed Faiz’s piece, he takes readers on an intense ride, as they witness him quickly fall into the

pit of inauthentic love. 1 Corinthians looks at love on a grander scale, whereas “Before you

Came” zeroes in on an instance of a toxic relationship. I chose these two pieces because looking

at them side by side really drives home the importance of both looking for and cultivating pure

love.

In conclusion, love is a strong force, capable of changing the direction of someone’s life,

and it is important to know how to recognize healthy love. I personally struggled with this a lot a

few years ago, and I was vulnerable with people who did not love me with patience, kindness,
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and endurance. In turn, I was also not pouring out pure love. I loved people in hopes of getting

something back, validation. I did this for years, thinking that there could not be anything majorly

wrong with loving people. The problem is, these relationships did not last, and over time, it got

harder to love others for fear I would keep losing more of myself. I had no idea though that pure

and healthy love is poured out without expectation of anything in return except for that same

pure and healthy love from others. In many ways, I feel as if I can connect to Faiz in his poem. I

can relate to those feelings of being overwhelmed with hollow love and soaking it up because

you are just so desperate for love and validation. Faiz’s poem shows readers though that this type

of love does not work out. The love Paul speaks of however works for quite a bit though, as it is

said to last even after the universe fades away. Love has been a part of human history for a good

bit depending on how you believe human life got started, and I think it is for good reason.

Without love, much of what makes us human would not exist. We would not experience wonder,

art, music, celebration, dancing, growing, connection, or progression; and so it is as it always has

been, love, is the crux of human existence.

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Works Cited

Faiz, Faiz Ahemd. “Before You Came .” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets,

poets.org/poem/you-came.

“The Way of Love.” Bible Gateway, www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%2BCorinthians

%2B13&version=ESV.