I truly hate how people use the term chaos to define things, anything at all. Chaos is wild and unfocused, being family to disaster in general.
“Real love is always chaotic.”
No, just…no. Not even remotely close to being an accurate statement. I see love as being fairly subjective, different for every person. Even so, I disagree with this sentiment on a fundamental level.
To start, the term “real love” is already a misnomer. Love is love, and if it isn’t love, then it’s not love. That’s how words work. You don’t eat an apple and say “Yup, that’s a real apple.” It’s an apple, because if it wasn’t an apple, we wouldn’t call it an apple. So if something’s not real love, we wouldn’t call it love. People do, of course, but in those cases we aren’t dealing with love at all, right? If it’s not a real love, then it’s not love, so we should simply call it whatever it is.
“You lose control; you lose perspective. You lose the ability to protect yourself.”
This might be the worst way to describe love that I’ve ever encountered, and all because of one word. Well, in this example, it’s actually three words; lose. You lose control? You lose perspective? You lose the ability to protect yourself?
Fucking.
Garbage.
If you are trying to define love by what you lose, you clearly have no idea what love is. Love is not defined by what you have to give up. In fact, if you think you are in love and you’ve lost basic faculties, such as control and perspective, then you are most definitely not in love.
Love isn’t all rainbows and sunshine. Love does mean some sacrifice, but never a lose. Whatever you sacrifice you do so because it will equal a net gain. Love should be defined by what you gain, not what you lose. Love might only be one letter away from being lose, but when it comes to their definitions, they are polar opposites.
“The greater the love, the greater the chaos. It’s a given and that’s the secret.”
If chaos is a “given” in your experience of “real love”, then perhaps you should re-evaluate what you are doing. And since when does chaos have a correlation with anything? Isn’t chaos, by its very definition, unable to be correlated to anything?
Chaos means, and I’m quoting the dictionary here, “complete disorder and confusion”. In even simpler terms, chaos means not knowing what the fuck is going on. Are we to believe that the greater the disorder and confusion the greater a love? How does that make ANY sense AT ALL?!
Answer: IT DOESN’T.
To be fair, I’ve never read anything by Jonathan Carroll, nor have I ever heard of “White Apples”, but I saw this quote floating around the internet on various blogs, Facebook feeds, instagrams and pinterest boards.
And I am worried by that.
This is a dangerous idea to put into people’s minds and hearts. They will adopt an unhealthy idea of how love should be. As I said before, I think love is very subjective, but all love should still share some common elements, and the very bare minimum would be that love is defined not by what you lose, but by what you gain.
In summary:
Chaos is not a good term to define anything except for…chaos itself.
Love is not stronger because of the presence of greater confusion.
Apples are apples, and that means they are not white. White apples are not, in fact, “Real” apples.
Please, if you have any friends or family you have an unhealthy idea of what love is, make sure to challenge them. It’s for their own good. Reference back to this post if need be. Hell, just send them my way and I’ll rant for hours until they wake up to reason.
Finally, Jonathan Carroll, if you ever end up reading this, please know I am not attacking you as a person. I am simply attacking your idea of love expressed in this quote. Because it’s really, really stupid.
That little light from your lampshade 