To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls.
Interpretation
Loving without true understanding often serves our own needs rather than those of the person we claim to love.
This quote by Thomas Merton suggests that when we love blindly, we may focus solely on our desire to love instead of genuinely caring for the well-being of the other person. This kind of love becomes a selfish exercise where our emotional fulfillment takes precedence over the true needs and advantages of the beloved, highlighting the necessity of mindful and selfless love.
In practice
In a counseling session, one might use this quote to help clients recognize the importance of understanding their partners' needs.
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
But I love you I'm totally and completely in love with you and I don't care if you think it's too late. I'm telling you anyway.
In love longing I listen to the monk's bell. I will never forget you even for an interval short as those between the bell notes.
My mother once told me that if a married couple puts a penny in a pot for every time they make love in the first year, and takes a penny out every time after that, they'll never get all the pennies out of the pot.
You are my inspiration and my folly. You are my light across the sea, my million nameless joys, and my day's wage. You are my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my transfiguration and purification. You are my rapscallionly fellow vagabond, my tempter and star. I want you.
You can’t replace people you love with other people…But you can trust that you’re not going to run out of people to love.
You know how is it when you love someone? And the hard part, the bad part, the Jerry Springer Show part is that you never stop loving someone. There's always a piece of them in your heart.
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