Quote Originally Posted by mastersgem View Post
Some people in this life get to experience a truly selfless form of love, a love that stays simply because there is no other choice whether together or apart, a love that they give purely and without anything in return, a love that is rare, a love that is unconditional.
I think this is a beautiful way to explain unconditional love. That said, and for myself, I don't think there is such a ideal as unconditional love. I don't believe humans are capable of such. People are capable of feeling indescribable emotions towards others, yes, but I think there are always conditions placed on such feelings. The person who gives purely and without the want of anything in return is indeed a rare soul, but even within that pure, seemingly unselfish giving, the one doing such is guaranteed to be getting something from it, or s/he wouldn't continue doing it.

Look at Mother Teresa as an example. I'm not Catholic, but I happen to think she was one of the best among us as an example of selflessness. That said, her own words tell us that everything she did was because of her selfish, "this feels good to me", better-do-it-or-else conditional reasoning.

Mother Teresa felt a "call within the call" several years into her nun-hood (or whatever it's called), and said- "I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith."

Not many will argue against the statement that Mother Teresa was a saint and lived her life in ways that 99.999% of the population never could or ever will, and that her works were blessed and admirable and even noble (well, Tom might). But for all the pure goodness involved in her works, she did it conditionally. My thought is that even Mother Teresa didn't believe in unconditional love. If she had, she wouldn't have felt compelled to live as she did. She was motivated by the need to not fail her God. Because if she did, he would be displeased with her, and she wasn't having that. So what she practiced wasn't unconditional love, despite how it looked on the surface. Her conditions were that she was ordered by God to do such and not doing it would have been a grave sin. Sure, she lived her life never expecting any thank you's or recognition (still, she got them overabundantly), so many say what she did with her life happened because she loved all those souls unconditionally. Not so. She said it herself.

Now I used a religious figure as an example, so that may hamper the credibility of my argument for some. But the core of my post here is that we all do what we do- love included- because of an underlying motivation. Even in love we don't get away from the conditions. Even if the only motivator is the hope of what may one day be, it's still a selfish, conditional aspect applied to what we call love.

Even in it's most positvely radiant form, love is conditional. I don't happen to think that's a negative. If selfishness (or whatever term you wish to use) nurtures the feelings between two people and makes their lives, along with others around them, so much more fabulous because of the conditions they place therein, then yay and woohoo! That's a great big happy for those involved. And not a bad thing at all.