Security and Significance etc

Following on from the Alanis Morrissette's song, I was actually having a discussion with my brother-in-law recently about the pursuit of personal glory, beauty, significance and security and all that sort of thing.

He made the comment that for most people unconditional love is not enough – that if love can spring from at least two sources, duty and desire, most people want to experience a love motivated by more than a sense of duty, more than a decision. We actually want to be loved for something unique, amazing, particularly attractive about us as an individual – to have a quality that makes us hard not to love, to be worthy of love, to be desired. It's a true and valid point I think.

But unconditional love is certainly a comfort. This brother-in-law of mine went on to make the point that a love springing from desire is something that we have less control over (though we can certainly foster right desires). So this kind of love is a very fragile, difficult thing, and for that reason, precious when it is experienced.

Maybe that is why people come back to singing "that I would be good" – because we all realise how precarious desire really is.