How do we come to love? We are certainly not born as loving creatures. As babies the universe revolves only around our needs. As children love becomes a quickly mastered art of manipulating our audience to entertain our simplest urge. I’ll say it – the greatest gift of childhood is diplomatic immunity for the narcissist we are.
Coddled as babes – or not, Mother Nature has never played favorites to us, the human animal. Her lessons are not of love, rather survival of the fittest; kill or be killed. As humans, we are defenseless against the elements, and vulnerable prey to just about every beast or vermin that walks, slithers or flies. To survive, we learned strength in numbers. Thus the egocentric, solitary man became a social animal.
In communion as tribe members, mankind – the animal gifted with insight and reason – came to discover another vulnerability – this one a demon found within. This torment is our separation from nature, and a haunting separateness from one another. Reality is, we are all born alone, and we die alone. Not to be cynical, but life is but a short space in time sandwiched between birth and death. In that short period of time we are granted very rare opportunities to escape the prison that is our loneliness. The only instrument capable of affecting our collective state of aloneness – short or long term – is love; it is our saving grace, like a personal flame to draw others close to our solitary soul. Only love can pacify the fear and anxiety of separateness – the condition of becoming aware of being alone.
In community, we, the individual, had to learn trust in our fellow man. In fellowship with others, our animal needs, like the call to mate, and our basic craving for companionship, evolved into a desire to serve, and a capacity to care for others. The zenith of this maturity is love.
It’s not always obvious or exposed, but seeds of love are abundant in us all. We all carry a boundless personal store with choices to lock it away with fear within our hearts, or plant it anywhere we please: onto objects, onto ideas, onto philosophies and doctrines, or onto each other. Who would argue that of all the things that humans are capable of loving, that love we share with one another is our most satisfying life achievement, though equally, can become our gravest folly.
Even with the reverence we show love, our addiction to love, we routinely take love for granted. It’s as though we’re entitled to love, like a birthright requiring no lessons, an ingrown talent requiring no practice, or a vehicle we drive purely on instinct. As kids we mimic the love practices of people within proximity to us, but can anyone pinpoint what about love determines whether it manifests as our deepest joy, or provokes a lifetime of frustration and pain? Such questions are rhetorical curiosities we cycle silently inside our heads. Sobering questions about love, when they come, if they come at all, typically rise when love fails us. Even then the question most lamented is why is love so cruel.
I’ve asked this very question more than once in my life, or at least until I broke through to smarter questions like what is love – really, or why does love feel different depending on the object of love. Why is a mother’s love felt differently than love of a father; why is love of self felt apart from love of God, and why does brotherly love, or love for our fellow man – an act that holds peace on earth in the balance – create less pain than the challenges inherent in romantic love? These and other unasked questions are the subject of upcoming blogs: The Loving Art. Love for you to share the journey with me.
Christopher, as one who has a great capacity to love and be loved, but has felt the pain of loss of love many times, I appreciate your strongly expressed articulation of the joys, challenges and questions about it. I’ll look forward to your next installment. And remember, you are loved, dearly.
Looking forward to more reflections on this complex and mysterious subject.