You Are Not a Beautiful Unique Snowflake

Last St. Valentines Day I found myself in my car listening to this bit on NPR by a Philosopher who goes by the name of Alain de Botton. He was speaking on the celebration of love on and he made an interesting point that I quote below:

We might say the most romantic thing we can ever do is prove worthy of love. That we have to prove worthy is something of taboo for us. After all, we like to think of love as a birthright. Our deepest wish is to be loved for who we are, just for existing. But this flies in the face both of experience and the largely forgotten insights of Greek Philosophy.

And ain’t that the truth? Raise a glass to philosophers everywhere. We don’t deserve love simply for existing. Any more than we deserve fame or fortune. Rather we must strive to attain theose qualities that make us lovable. He goes on:

'When we love someone', said Plato, 'we can only ever be attracted by goodness. Love is a natural response to sensing virtue in someone. Kindness, intelligence, sensitivity, strength and so on.' Now a key part of this theory is that not everything in us is good and therefore not everything in us is worthy of being loved. Half of us at least is dominated by malevolent passions.

He goes on to note that perhaps a better way to celebrate love would be to reflect on what makes us less than loveable.

This starts to hint at what a properly romantic day should be for us. One where we focus hard on how we often prove less than loveable in our ordinary behavior and try to do something about it. A romantic day would mean addressing our tendencies to sarcasm, anxiety, anger or self-righteousness.

I’ve linked to the full three minute audio and the full text transcript for your perusal.