The two questions might not be as unrelated as you think.
A man can have many purposes throughout a lifetime. Sometimes life leads us in directions that we would not have expected.
And to care for someone... [He's truly feeling sorry for you if you don't know what this means.]
It means that you share their joy and their pain. You try to ease their burden and comfort them when they need it. You are there for them no matter what.
So it is not unheard of to cease having one purpose and to gain another? ...is something like that common among living beings, or is it only under certain circumstances that it occurs? ...and for that matter, if something like that is possible, are people capable of having more than one purpose at a time?
I believe that people can choose their own paths-their own purposes. It's not uncommon for a person to change the course that their life is on. And yes, I do think it is possible to have more than one purpose at a time.
[Iroh pauses and his tone changes a bit. It's just full of compassion for you, little one.]
Sometimes. But people who are very different can still care for each other a great deal.
But what if you were created for a specific reason? Would your existence lose meaning if you lost that reason? Or would something like that not matter to most humans, and they would simply find some other purpose?
[he frowns, and the slight confusion might play into his tone.] That does not make sense. Why would one person care for another living being that was not like them?
Where I come from there is a lot of talk about destiny. But what people assume to be destiny and what actually is may be two different things. If we are created for a specific reason, perhaps it is not always readily apparent. Who is to say that the reason you lost was the reason? Maybe you have yet to find it.
Some people who seem very different may have something in common on a deeper level. Or perhaps they simply enjoy each other's company. And, of course, family can be very different from each other. "Why" is not always an easy question to answer when it comes to love, if it can be answered at all.
I have not necessarily lost anything. It merely seems far more complicated and pointless than I initially thought, now that other events have been revealed to me. But there is little doubt in my mind that it is something I would be able to change, either.
...is "love" meant to be the same thing as "caring for someone"? Or is there a difference?
--oh! There is no need for you to apologize for that; it was my mistake, I should be the one apologizing to you.
...so there is more than one meaning to the words that I need to learn about? [o-oh dear. he was having a hard enough time as it was figuring this stuff out.]
[Just who are you and where are you from that you don't know about love, kid? :(]
There are. For example, one can love a spouse, a child, a sibling, a niece or nephew, and a friend. It's a different feeling for each person, but it is all love. One cares for them all. Just in different ways.
[he knows about love! ....in theory. 8|a he knows it's an emotion and that it sometimes makes people do extremely stupid or violent things. ....but yeah, no emotional understanding of it at all.]
If you do not have most of those things, is there a need to learn the different ways to give them love? Or does it not have any particular meaning in such a case?
[And on occasion, wonderful things, Iroh would point out.]
Ah. In most cases love is a feeling that grows between people. One doesn't necessarily learn it, it comes naturally. However, some people do have difficulty finding ways to express it and that can certainly be learned.
That is likely because I have not learned any other way to speak about it yet! I still know very little about emotions and feelings, you see, and they are still difficult for me to understand.
A man can have many purposes throughout a lifetime. Sometimes life leads us in directions that we would not have expected.
And to care for someone... [He's truly feeling sorry for you if you don't know what this means.]
It means that you share their joy and their pain. You try to ease their burden and comfort them when they need it. You are there for them no matter what.
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But what inspires someone to care for another being? Is it because they might have things in common, or be similar in some ways that others are not?
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[Iroh pauses and his tone changes a bit. It's just full of compassion for you, little one.]
Sometimes. But people who are very different can still care for each other a great deal.
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[he frowns, and the slight confusion might play into his tone.] That does not make sense. Why would one person care for another living being that was not like them?
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Some people who seem very different may have something in common on a deeper level. Or perhaps they simply enjoy each other's company. And, of course, family can be very different from each other. "Why" is not always an easy question to answer when it comes to love, if it can be answered at all.
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...is "love" meant to be the same thing as "caring for someone"? Or is there a difference?
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It is. Or it can be. There are many types of love and many ways to care for someone, of course. Other people may use different terms.
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...so there is more than one meaning to the words that I need to learn about? [o-oh dear. he was having a hard enough time as it was figuring this stuff out.]
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There are. For example, one can love a spouse, a child, a sibling, a niece or nephew, and a friend. It's a different feeling for each person, but it is all love. One cares for them all. Just in different ways.
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If you do not have most of those things, is there a need to learn the different ways to give them love? Or does it not have any particular meaning in such a case?
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Ah. In most cases love is a feeling that grows between people. One doesn't necessarily learn it, it comes naturally. However, some people do have difficulty finding ways to express it and that can certainly be learned.
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...then the feeling itself does not necessarily need to be learned, but one must learn to identify and distinguish between that and other emotions?
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Surely you have emotions of your own...
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