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Tom Inglis Biography

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“While we associate love with romance and passion, making love in everyday life revolves more around an attempt to create and sustain meaning and happiness. The search for perfect love is probably as fruitless as the search for perfect happiness. Kaufmann argues that passion will always erupt in people’s lives, but that if a couple can develop a relationship based on agapic love, then it is possible for them to build a house ‘of little pleasures brick by brick’.”

“It can be seen not just as part of the human condition, but central to what it is to be human. We recognize in others what we see in ourselves. We understand what it is to be human by putting ourselves in their shoes. We develop a sense of sympathy, compassion and tenderness towards people we meet in everyday life, even strangers. There is a sense of sameness. It is not a coincidence that we describe people who embody the same habitus, who are sympathetic and caring, who are kind and helpful, as being lovely.”

“Once they left school, Mark and Lucy stopped being religious. Instead of embodying the discourse and practices of the Catholic Church, they embodied the discourse and practice of love, sex and romance. Instead of going to church, they went to pubs and discos. Instead of embracing piety, humility and chastity, they embraced each other. Instead of kneeling down and praying, they shook their bodies to the rhythms of popular music. Instead of putting up pictures of holy men and women, they put up pictures of music and film stars. Instead of reading about the lives of saints, they read about the lives of celebrities. Instead of listening to hymns, they listened to songs about love and romance. Mark and Lucy were part of a new breed of people that began to emerge, particularly during the twentieth century, who believed more in themselves than God. They believed in the pursuit of happiness and pleasure more than in self-sacrifice. They saw passion and sex not as dangerous, but as central to living a fulsome life.”

“Making love is a risky business. The more people surrender to, and invest themselves in the one they love, the more they run the risk of being emotionally burnt if the relationship ends. Like any economic investment, there is a realization that the more care and love you give to a loved one, the greater the loss if they leave or die. And yet, despite all the messages to live free, to taste and try, and despite the grief and heartache that comes when love fails or dies, people still enter into marriage and long-term relationships and commitments.”