Antecedent: (n) A thing or event that existed or logically precedes another.

I, for one, am personally enraged over the comment.

“All’s fair in love and war.”

I don’t know who had the audacity to throw love and war into the same mix and assume that they are achieved through similar motivations.

There is an antecedent to love, and certainly a different one to war. The two are not the same. And one would have to be extraordinarily cynical to believe that they are triggered by similar emotions.

Matter of fact, if you can find the antecedent, you can pretty well guarantee love, or at least something that is a delightful replica.

And if you insist on the antecedent for war, grab your helmet and grenades.

I believe the antecedent for love is contentment.

I’ve never seen two people who allow the seeds of discontentment to take root who can maintain their affection, but instead, become picky and fussy with one another.

What is contentment? Contentment is a decision to find our joy and peace of mind working with what we’ve got instead of complaining about what we lack.

The antecedent for war is jealousy.

It manifests itself sometimes as greed. Other times it parades around as ambition. But somehow or another we convince ourselves that what other people possess was misappropriated and needs to be taken away from them by force and placed into our stockpile.

What is jealousy? It is a lack of contentment because we’ve convinced ourselves that in some way we’ve been cheated or that someone we considered to be our inferior has risen to the occasion to be our equal.

As you can see, love and war have no similarity with each other whatsoever. Matter of fact, love would find it difficult to spew hundreds of bullets into the night air against unseen faces which just happen to be wearing unacceptable uniforms.

“All is not fair in love and war.”

Love doesn’t look for fairness. It works towards compatibility.

Of course, war is never fair. It’s the illusion of superiority… which always makes us look puny.

Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix