Why True Love is a Myth and It's Plato’s Fault
The modern notion of “soul mate”, that there is someone out there who is just the right mate for us, is actually based on an old myth.
Plato is to blame. He included a famous myth in his work of Symposium that “people were hermaphrodites until God split them in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
Though I used to argue from the other side of the fence, I had ceased believing in Plato’s delusive concept myself, that there is someone out there waiting to share her life with me. The sooner we all make peace with that fact, the better we would feel.
Even the idea that “we should marry for love” is fairly novel too. For those of us whose ancestry hail from Asia and Africa, we can recall how our grandparents or some great-grandparents got united under “arranged marriages”. Does that mean that love founded after such a marriage is sealed is less real than Plato’s idea of true love, then?
Not necessarily.
In some cases, it is due to the less expectation of our partner that makes the love even more fulfilling.
Hence theone question we should ask ourselves.
Which school of thought do you believe in: Plato’s idea of “other half” or the traditional concept of “arranged love”?
Post’script ~
Lest I seem to contradict myself, I do not believe in the traditional concept of “arranged love” either. My feet are firmly planted on the middle ground. I like to play it by ear.
