A paper from an anonymous friend who wants this to get out there to give a voice to people who believe they have none. I hope you guys enjoy the reading.
Dear Father,
About two weeks ago, I read Plato’s Symposium. The Symposium is a philosophical text about a conversation that went on amongst a group of influential men who “all agreed not to make the present party a drinking bout, but for each to drink as he pleased.”(176E) Instead, they agreed with Phaedrus and Eryximachus to each“recite the fairest praise of Eros,”(177E) This was partly due to the fact that they were all still hung over from their feast the night before. While reading the symposiums, mind my wanders off a lot. The majority of the sidetrack thoughts were minuscule except for you. While reading a text by Plato describing a discussion from some about love from someone of the brightest people Athens had to offer, I kept thinking about you.
I know you must be filled with joy at the very idea of me thinking about you while I was perusing such an incredible book and deciding to write you afterward. This is a wrong assumption, the only reason I thought about you during my reading session was that you, as my father was supposed to be the one that teaches me about love, or at least set an example of how to love, however, you show me the opposite. You help to display what not to do to those you love. The reason I am writing you is to do what you should have done for me as a father. I am teaching you what love, platonic love, means through the points of Aristophanes’ speech and Socrates’ discussion with Agathon.
In Aristophanes speech, he tells a fable of how men and women came to be. He spoke of how they're used to be three genders, male, female, and the last which is but and neither at the same time. He explained that they disobeyed the Gods so Zeus split them into two. To feel complete they lash on to any man or women for companionship till the person dies and they move on the next. (189E-192E) While there was more to the story that this there is just one reason I was fascinated by it. It was the same reason Aristophanes told a story instead of just giving a normal speech like the rest, desire. There is an attraction in storytelling and what better way to tell a story about Love that with this. Aristophanes goes on to further explain this by giving his own definition of love, “ love is the name desire and pursuit of the whole.”(193A) This is why most children love their parent, though they had no choice when it came to picking them and most parents should love their children. This is also why men and women when the time comes, go out to the out to the cold and unforgiven world looking for to be whole once again. They look for someone whom their hearts chooses to love and who they hope loves them.
Socrates, during his discussion with Agaton, further explains what I came to see as the true definition of love is. This came in form of a question to Agathon, Socrates states, “ is it not the necessity rather than a likelihood that the desirous things desire what it is in need of, and does not desire unless it is in need?” (200B) You only desire out of necessity, and not only necessity is tangible, but some are also the mere opposition. The “desire and pursuit of the whole”, like Aristophanes said in his speech, is intangible but we still pursue it We want to feel whole, we desire it and continue desiring at longer after we obtain it. At least for as long as we find that it is a necessity.
That might be why you do not want my sister and me because you do not think you need us to fill the whole. I do not say this with anger or sorrow, I just want to let you know I understand. The problem is that I might need you in order to be whole. Though I receive unmeasured loved from my mother, sister, grandmother friends, and the rest of my family that needs me, I might need your love to feel whole, to feel complete That might be why I am truly writing this essay. Through the shadow of sarcasm that I cast, my heart shines a light that I want to be covered in darkness because this light is the truth. I want the love and acceptance of someone with whom I not only share half my DNA but half my name and history. I need the love of someone who doesn’t need me. This is why I was filled with dismay when Eryximachus states “thus love, in my opinion… is the fairest and the best, and, after this, he is the cause of everyone else of the same sort of fair and good things. If love, in form of the gods, is the fairest and best, then why would he be so cruel to have us searching to be whole our entire existence?
Sincerely,
Your loving son, XXXXXXXX.