Defining Love

I was on the ladder painting the house when a nearby religious radio station overpowered NPR and I heard someone railing against homosexuals.

I was amazed at how much hatred I was hearing. The evangelist said God defined homosexuality as a crime and further that God requires death for homosexuality. I started down the ladder but before I could retune the radio this same person said that he loved homosexuals. He mused, “How can I love these criminals who should be put to death? I love them because Jesus teaches that we should love our neighbors and even our enemies.”

“How sad,” I thought. “That person doesn’t understand love.” But then I thought, what is my understanding of love? I turned off the radio and climbed back up the ladder to think that over.

It certainly didn’t seem loving to condemn someone to death or call him a sinner saying he would go to hell. That seemed more like hate than love yet he saw no contradiction in what he was saying. As a Christian he knew that he was supposed to love everyone even his enemies. Did he understand the notion of loving everyone in some way I didn’t? It seemed that he was just using the word without giving it any meaning. Try as I might I couldn’t come up with any nature of love that would allow such harsh judgment. However, labeling what he was saying as hateful sure wasn’t getting me any closer to my understanding of love.

When I climbed off the ladder I went straight to my dictionary but no definition was particularly helpful even in describing my love for my wife, Barbara. Closest was “strong passionate affection” but my feeling for Barbara is much more than that. When I tell her I love her I mean I will do my best to never make her unhappy. The definitions for the verb “love” all started with “to have”. Shouldn’t love be an active verb? If so, what action? The dictionary tells me that to run I should move my legs rapidly. I’m not expecting to find a graphic definition like that for love but maybe there should be some reference to the body. We are fond of thinking of love as coming from the heart. Have we placed the seat of love in the heart because we don’t think we have any control over loving? Love and the heart don’t really have any connection. To love our neighbors or our enemies has got to be a conscious action. If someone sticks a gun in my ribs and says give me your money, I can’t see ever getting to some higher plane of consciousness in which I will be flooded with a feeling of love for this guy. It will take some work, some thinking to get over my gut feeling.

Nose still in the dictionary I look for definitions for two words similar to love (venerate and like) and the opposite of love (hate). These definitions all begin with “to regard” and the definition of to regard is “to think of with a particular feeling”.

Hate, venerate and like are things we do in our mind. While feelings are involved, still, we have some control.

Affection figures heavily in the definitions for love. Back to the dictionary. “Affection n 1. a settled good will, love, or zealous attachment: as the affection of a parent for his child. Good will could describe my desire to never make Barbara unhappy but it still doesn’t go far enough. Not only is it important that I not make her unhappy I wish happiness for her at all times from all angles. The same for my children. Ditto for my friends. In fact, I don’t wish anyone ill will. But the definition is not just “good will” but “settled good will”. Apparently, by this definition, there has to be some history involved with affection.

I could also say I have a “zealous attachment” to my immediate family but I wouldn’t say I am zealously attached to my friends. Are there different kinds of love? Did I love my father the same as I loved my mother? Do I love my son the same as I love my wife? Do I love my daughter the same as I love my son? As I think about these real relationships I realize that my feelings for each are different. Feelings! Do I feel the same about my father as I feel about my mother? My son as my wife? My daughter as my son? No. My feelings are different. My emotional response when I think of each is different.

What of the love for my neighbor or my enemies as expressed in The Bible. I don’t see anything in the definitions of love or affection that addresses love for everybody. Then it occurred to me that perhaps there was just one love, or rather a core love, a trunk from which the various forms of love branch.

On the ladder the next day I didn’t seem to be any closer to understanding love and then it occurred to me that what bothered me about the radio preacher was his judgment of homosexuals. I thought of my yoga teacher, a vegetarian which she carries to a judgment of all animals that eat other animals. She also preaches universal love. I once asked her if she loved hawks.

“Yes, but I don’t love how they eat. I wish they would learn to eat nuts and berries.”

“If you love them, shouldn’t you accept their nature, their being, as it is?”

Acceptance. Yeah. Can I imagine love without acceptance? No. Acceptance must be in the definition of love I’m looking for.

At some point in every session my yoga instructor tells the class to breathe in good thoughts, among them unconditional love. Of course love should be unconditional but, hold on a minute, is there even such a thing as conditional love? What might be a condition of love? I love you as long as you don’t kill someone. What kind of a friend would that be? If you kill someone, you will need my love more. Would I abandon a friend in the time of greatest need? Even traditional wedding vows deny conditional love—“to have and to hold, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health … until death do us part.”

Love must be unconditional acceptance. That covers the problem I had with the radio evangelist. If he accepted people’s sexual orientation or preference, he wouldn’t be judging them. It is something that I can actually do if I put my mind to it.

I’m still working on this core definition for the verb to love. I’m sure unconditional acceptance is necessary. A warm feeling also seems like a good addition at least for those with whom I come in contact—maybe not the guy with the gun. I’m also thinking that respect would be a good addition. These are all things that I can actually strive to do.

Getting away from my judgment that the radio evangelist doesn’t understand love is difficult. I want to rationalize and say that I accept him but I judge his belief. I certainly don’t hate him. I have no illusion that I could change him. I have thought about him, given him a family, found respect for his commitment to his beliefs accepted that he believes he loves his neighbors and his enemies and through this empathy exercise I have developed something of a warm feeling toward him. He must be good at his job to have a radio show. He probably brings hope and solace to many. In a way he is my enemy because of the hatred he preaches. Loving my enemies is tough.

All this thinking about love has helped me get over road rage. When someone pulls out in front of me now I’m just thankful I was able to slow down without an accident. It has done wonders for my blood pressure; much better than the days when I would ride up on the back of the offending driver and turn on my lights. Once, with the whole family in the car, I turned on the windshield wipers by mistake in my road-rage. “You sure showed him, Dad.” That has become a family joke.

I may never learn to love my enemies but I certainly enjoy driving more now that I have accepted that bad driving practices do not make bad people and I am making progress with my feelings for the evangelist.

Best Christmas present ever

When someone accompanies their gift with “It’s the thought that counts” it probably means not much thought went into the gift. Here is a gift idea I have used with wonderful responses; write a letter. You don’t have to be a great writer to give this gift because it isn’t the words that count but the thought. It works in all situations. How do I give my wife a present that was purchased with money that was ours? What do you give to someone who has everything? There is only one gift that is absolutely unique, that no one else can give; the gift of yourself, your time and thought. Here are some thoughts that might prove helpful.
1. I’m going to say it again. It is the thought that counts so start thinking about the person. Make a note to yourself if necessary to think about the person perhaps while driving or doing the dishes or some other activity when your mind has free run.
2. The most difficult part of writing is the first few words. Take pen and paper in hand or open a blank page in your word processor, write or type “Dear ______”. You are already thinking about the person whose name you put down. You may sit and stare at the page for awhile. If nothing comes, put it aside and do some random thinking but be sure you come back to the page. Put down “I (love, admire, respect, enjoy) you” if nothing else comes. Think about that for a bit. Why do you have feelings for this person? When did the feelings begin? (eg “I remember the day you were born…” and carry on from there.)
3. Recall some time you spent together (eg “Remember that time you borrowed my mower and forgot to return it.” No, no, no. Keep it positive. “I was just thinking about the time your leaves blew into my yard and you raked my yard for me. You really didn’t have to do that. I feel fortunate to have you as a neighbor.”)
4. When you have finished pretend you are the recipient and read it over. If there are any parts that don’t make you feel happy to have received in this letter, fix them. Hardest thing for parents writing to their children is to try not to ‘help’ them become better people. All of my letters from my father devolved into lectures. I wanted his love. I wanted him to know me, to respect me, to accept me, to care about me. I don’t think I was much different than anyone else in what I wanted. If you express love in your letter, your gift will be greatly appreciated.
Good luck. I’ve got some letters to work on.

Empathy and romance

I want to get to know that woman. I lust for her. I wish I could just go up to her and say, “You are very attractive. I’d like to get to know you, maybe date, maybe kiss, you know. What do you think? Do you share my interest?”
Actually, I think she might be at least a little interested in me. I see her once a week. We say “hi” to each other. We know each other’s names but the only thing we have in common that we know of is the class we take together. “How’d you like the class today?” “Good.” “Yeah.” We have also talked about the weather.
Those extremes—the weather and other inanities at one end and “wanna fuck” and any other overtly direct approach—are not likely to advance a relationship. It’s time for an empathetic approach. If I want to get into that lady’s pants, the best approach is to get into her head. What is she thinking? Who is she? What does she want in life?
When I was younger, more physically attractive and closer to her age, I would likely have used an old favorite line of the time: “What’s your sign?” How obvious and maybe even shocking coming from someone my age. I really don’t want to be thought a dirty old man. Asking someone their astrological sign is certainly advancing in the right direction, however. Even “how are you?” is better than the weather.
I need to know more about her. Does she have a job? What is it? How long has she had it? Does she like it? What would she rather be doing? What does she do with her idle time? Does she read? What is she reading? Has she been married? Does she have children? Has she traveled? Did she go to college? Now I’m cooking! It’s not all about me and my desire. I need to get to know her, what makes her tick.
I’m pretty sure there is no such thing as a mind-reader. There have been times when I felt that I knew what someone was thinking but when something important is on the line the best any of us can do is to think empathetically. The closer we can get to understanding what another is thinking, what they want, the more successful we will be in getting what we want.

How to love 2

Not how to love another or your dog or vegetables or your country--just how to love. Not how to love your spouse or how to love your mother or how to love your father or how to love your son or daughter. My daughter didn’t wait to teach her son how to jump until he was old enough to broad jump or high jump. She taught him what fun it was to jump in puddles and to jump into her arms. Knowing what jumping is he will be ready for someone to teach him how to jump over a bar or to jump a distance or to jump out of an airplane.
It seems to me we ought to learn how to love without the encumbrance of all the different kinds of love. Sure my grandson is learning how to love his parents and grandparents. That is easy because he is being loved but what is that love that he is receiving? It is a feeling, to be sure. Basking in the radiant love of his parents and grandparents feels good, so good he returns it in kind with a smile, a giggle, a wriggle and even a full body spasm. How wonderful that feeling is. That must be part of love, a warm, happy feeling.
How can we have a warm, happy feeling about someone we hardly know? If we are to believe that we should love our enemies, what is that love? Can we have positive feelings about Osama bin Laden? Maybe love for our enemies doesn’t include a warm feeling, but what then?

Self-love

We are all different. I say this a lot because I want you to understand that when I write about something that works for me, it may not work for you; just because I like broccoli and George H.W. Bush does not does not make him a bad person or less good than I am or visa versa. We are all different [Period or exclamation point, you choose.]
Sonja Lyubomirsky writes in The How of Happiness, a scientific approach to getting the life you want “happy participants [in a test against another] felt more upbeat than they had been earlier and thought better of their ability, regardless of whether they had witnessed someone perform much better or much worse than they. The self-assessments of unhappy people, by contrast, were keenly sensitive to the experience of witnessing another person’s superior performance.”
My reaction is, sure, it’s because happy people are self-contained. It is all inside. We perform up to our own potential and recognize that there are likely others who would do better. We are unique and able to celebrate our uniqueness without care of being different, not better or worse, just different, than anyone else.
You are unique and that’s a good thing. I wish that were taught more in our schools. Some children will be “left behind” in math, others in reading, others in sports, others in music, others…well, you get the idea. “Left behind” what? We fail each other when we fail to recognize each other’s uniqueness. If you are reading this, you are old enough or advanced enough in thinking to recognize your own beauty and value, your own strengths. Let me say that again. If you are reading this you have the ability to recognize your own strengths, value, and beauty? I have no idea to what extent you may be using your ability.
Self confidence, self-respect, and self-love are gained through self-understanding. Self-love is the foundation for all love.

PS Each of us has someone to love that does not depend on another. The ability is within each of us to love ourselves. That doesn’t make it easy, just possible. To love ourselves we need to keep tabs on what makes us happy and what does not and do more of the former and less of the latter.

How to love

Kinds of love?
Rather a core, a foundation, a trunk from which love branches.
A love that is central to life.
Love others as thyself?
Love myself?
Self-respect.
Self acceptance.
The core.
The foundation.
The trunk from which I love my parents
My children,
My friends,
My neighbors,
Yea, even mine enemies.

Duality

Duality, the belief that we have something, a soul, that exists independently of the body. Descartes failed to prove duality as have all others who have tried. I shan’t try.

There is anecdotal evidence. I have some myself. Driving my 96 year old mother home from one of her last stays in the hospital she told me of an experience she had that was something more than a dream. She told of being in this wonderful place and all her friends were there. She positively glowed when she related the story. She was describing a place that she had been taught to believe was where she would go when she died. Skeptic though I may be, the way she told the story, the way she looked and the condition of her mind the rest of the time force me to believe she, at the very least, had a powerful dream. She did not make up the story to try to convince me there is a life after death.

In the hospital a few months later, on her deathbed, we had an encounter that absolutely could not have been under her control. That morning I had found her unconscious. The ambulance took her to the hospital. I sat with her much of the day holding her hand, talking to her, but got no response. The doctor and I conferred and agreed that nothing should be done to try to revive her. He told me she might hang on for a week but it would probably not be longer than a day. He had reason to hedge his bet as she had already lived four times as long as he said she would 16 years before.

That evening my daughter and I went to visit her. I expected to find her as I had left her but she shocked me by opening her eyes, looking at me and demanding, “Where am I?!” I was flabbergasted. How had she revived? Should I call the doctor and have an IV attached?

“Where am I?” she repeated with incredible strength..

“In the hospital.”

” How did I get here?”

“You were unconscious when I came in this morning and…”

“How did I get here?”

“I called the ambulance.” She just kept getting more frustrated and angry. To use one of her pet phrases she was mad as a wet hen and nothing I said was answering her questions. She gave up trying to get an answer and Caitlin had an opportunity to express her love for her grandmother and to say good-by.

What was that all about? While driving home I came to the conclusion that she was not asking about the events of the day. The “here” she was asking about was not the hospital. I believe that she had been in that other place glowing in her surroundings when she was suddenly yanked back to this world; perhaps to allow her granddaughter one last time to express her love. How did she get here indeed? Was it a dream that she was rudely pulled away from or another world? If another world, she still didn’t know who was pulling the strings or how.

Some may ask how I could not believe in a life after death after that personal experience. First, I don’t disbelieve in a life after death any more strongly than I believe in such a possibility. I can say I’m an agnostic which means I don’t know but I go a little farther than that. I don’t care. That’s not to say that I’m not curious. I find the possibility interesting and worth thinking about. But the philosophical things that are most important to me are those that guide and inform my life. Life is the period between birth and death. There is a tremendous amount of information to be dealt with in that reality. There are tremendous rewards within life.

Am I not comforted by thinking that my mother is in a nice place, a place that made her glow when she thought about it and that made her angry to be pulled away? Not really.

That may, undoubtedly does, seem cold to some. I can’t speak for others feelings. I don’t deny them their beliefs nor do I care to diminish them in any way. It may be simply that I am less feeling than some. Or it may be that I feel my relationship with my mother was whole, complete. We had no outstanding issues. I didn’t feel I owed her anything or that she owed me anything. She is gone from my life and my life goes on. She does not visit my thoughts very much at all. She is part of my history but I am living here in the present and she is not part of the present.

A possibility other than my relationship with my mother is my relationship with myself. I am at peace with myself in a way that is entirely different than before what I feel comfortable calling my rebirth. That took place about 15 years ago (I’d have to look at my writing to figure out exactly when.). It was nothing so remarkable as an epiphany. No one but me saw any difference but the change to me was dramatic. I think I lost fear though I have not been tested and really don’t care to be.

This life is so marvelous I simply can’t see any point in spending much time envisioning another life that may be better--or may be worse if you believe in a heaven and a hell. If the soul’s fate is determined by the kind of life led by the mind and body and the determination is made by the creator, the giver of life, than how better to receive an afterlife reward than to live this life, this gift, to the fullest? What better way to live it than in ways that bring joy and take pleasure? How could one be more thankful of a gift than to use it well?

Was my mother’s soul recalled briefly or did she awaken from a dream? To what purpose and why at that exact moment? Some may say it was to make me a believer. That is their reality. Since I believe it’s all about me my answer is that the experience was given me for me to contemplate which clearly I have done. Since you are reading this it may have all been so you could read about it and have it affect you however it may.

Is there a link between money and happiness?

A simple yes or no is problematic because defining happiness in general is probably impossible. As I read various studies on this illusive subject, illusive because it is subjective, I am interested in something I label profound happiness as opposed to something that comes and goes with wealth or the weather. Profound happiness is a state of being. That is not to say it doesn’t also have ups and downs but it is based on a concordance between how we are living our lives and how we believe we should be living.

Where I find support for my belief that happiness is not linked to money or anything material is in experiences like Joseph Campbell’s; who says his happiest time was during the Depression when he had no money, lived in a rooming house where the rent was forgiven and read borrowed books; and Eric Weiner’s experiences in The Geography of Bliss where he found his own happiness affected positively in Bhutan and Iceland and negatively in Moldova. It is time for another caveat. I don’t know what works for anyone else, what it is like inside anyone else. I write about what works for me, what I have learned about myself within this thing called life, because reading about and observing other people has proved helpful to me and I hope my thoughts might prove helpful to another.

I am convinced that what we need is air, water, food and shelter, not money. Those are indisputable for keeping our bodies alive. It can be debated whether or not our soul has needs. The existence of a soul is debatable but I’m going with duality here—body and soul. My soul needs companionship and something else. I’m not sure what—to be needed, work, a goal, a project, something meaningful to do? I am reminded of retired people who volunteered for me on a project and how grateful they were for the opportunity I gave them to volunteer. When I would thank them they would invariably say, “No, Thank YOU.” However I also know some retired people who do little more than read the paper every day. We are all different.

For me, yes, I keep trying to retire and now, in the winter, when the garden is put to bed, I don’t want to work any more than I have to at the restaurant. I want to kick back and read. But there is another thing gnawing at me, some need I feel to be doing more. I think about volunteering or, perhaps running for a town or state office. I keep talking myself out of it yet I feel that it would feel good to be involved in something larger than myself. I think this comes from my belief that I can make a difference, that my approach to people could move an entity in a positive direction. There would be meetings and things to figure out, problems to solve. I think I would feel needed.

I have known retired people who took up a musical instrument, who took up a new sport or started building models. I think any of these activities might fill the same void, might feed the soul. There are those who spend hours fiddling with their investments. This could be the same kind of thing though it seems different to me.

Where do I get off talking about profound happiness as if I had reached some vaunted plateau? Good question. I’m glad I asked it first. If you understand my philosophical base, you will realize that I am running my life on the assumption that I may be the only person involved in my life, all else, everyone else is an illusion, a hologram--characters and events through and around which I weave my life (or my life is woven). You, at this moment, are an important part of my life. I know, I know first I tell you you don’t exist and then I tell you you are an important part of my life. I hate the confusion but I’m unable to be clearer at this point. Perhaps I will be more articulate at some future time.

You are important to me because I love you and I want you to be happy. Telling you that I have something that you might not have is no way to make you happy. The best I can do now is to suggest that you smile at someone. Think about some specific person or situation in which you will have an opportunity to give off a big sincere smile—a “Hi, I’m sure glad to be sharing this space and time with you. I’m glad we are both alive here together.” Think about the situation now and maybe even make a note to yourself to help you remember. It can be a store clerk, a person coming toward you on the street, a neighbor, anyone. If you experience is anything like mine, most times you will get a smile back. If that smile doesn’t make you feel better, then give up any effort to understand my philosophy.

Two worlds

The questions I explore here will be answered from the belief that love is the only thing that can truly save the world—both worlds. Two worlds, you ask? Yes.

The world we first think of is what we know of the world, the physical planet, space in the earth’s atmosphere, the political and belief oriented spheres we live in. In this world we may be thinking that it needs to be saved from environmental degradation, from terrorists, from economic collapse, from poverty or immigrants or killer bees. How can love save this world? The short answer is that it will take a long time, longer than anyone alive today will live to see but that shouldn’t be a reason to ignore the potential.

The second world is one that can be saved within your lifetime. It is the world that is very close to you. It is what you see and hear and feel and taste—the world of your senses. It is your world. There may not even be another world. You may be the only person in existence. You are certainly the only person experiencing your world. Even if you and I stood next to each other we would be in different worlds. Consider us standing side by side looking at a cylindrical oatmeal box a couple of feet away. We do not see the same thing.

If we stand side by side and look at something far away, say the moon, don’t we see the same thing then? In the context of the first example, yes, physically what we are looking at is the same but we are using different instruments. Our bodies are genetically different and they have been through different histories. We don’t even know for sure that what we are seeing is the same color as the other person sees through his or her eyes. Whatever it is you see, hear, taste, feel, smell and otherwise perceive it is your world, the world you live in every waking moment.

If you feel hatred for anyone, a relative or neighbor, the President or Osama bin Ladin, I invite you to check out for yourself just how that hatred makes you feel. Let’s say every time you hear President Bush on the radio or television it makes you angry. That can’t feel good. Why not improve your world by simply avoiding listening to him? Just tune out. Don’t listen to the news or anything else where you are likely to hear him. Never mind any arguments you might have that not listening to the President would not be a good idea. We are only talking about your world and you can make your world better by tuning in to your world and taking actions that will improve the way YOU feel. Nobody else. There may not even be anybody else. There is certainly nobody else living in your world.

There is a way to listen to the President (in this example) without getting angry. That is the love part and I’ll be exploring that further in the future.