I don’t really know anything about loving, or how to be loved.
And yet, the most amount of suffering I have in my life is about people I think I love, and whom I believe love me, but not in the right way, at the right time, in the right place.
Right as in proper, as in constructive, as in morally good, as in growing and expanding, not blocking and limiting.
Sometimes, like now, the people are collapsing into one person, the one male, the one true partner, the controler, the husband/son, the abuser.
This can happen with women, too, the mother/friend, the confidant, the true equal, the life-giver and betrayer.
And then, there is God, and the concept of god being love. Love being the thing that brings matter into being, that guides and shapes it, that is the highest moral good.
Love thy neighbor, as the Christians say. Compassion, says the Dalai Lama. Caring for the other. That is the most critical thing.
For the first part of my life, the other was a thing I wanted: it was the creation of a beautiful and timeless work of art. Money, fame, all those things, it seemed to me, might be side effects of the accomplishment of that material goal. It could be a performance, or a text (ah, see, performances can’t really be timeless…although they can theoretically be repeated or recorded…one of the problems I have with live theatre). But somehow, I would know when this was achieved. It would be clear when it happened.
But later, it started to become clear that the material things, the art and accomplishments, they were never going to satisfy this longing, this loving. Because the love they gave was not genuine, it was not deep, it was not consistent, it was not specific. A person was needed to give this kind of love, in return. Relationships were more important than things. People are more important than ideas about or objects of or moments of art. Art is only important in so much as it helps, enriches, teaches, inspires, and entertains other people.
And yet, all those objects and moments come from desire, which is a kind of love. God doesn’t only love mankind, he also loves the trees and animals and planets and stars and black holes. All creation is linked by love.
So, really, my loving problem, I’m afraid, is in part due to my lack of a proper relationship to God. I suffer, because I cannot open fully to God’s love. Because I am afraid of losing my sense of control, my sense of self: of losing my pain and suffering, which helps define what I am. How can I as a single self possibly matter to the utter vastness of creation?
So, we matter through the people that we meet, the people we love, the people who love us. Whom God also loves. And the loving is the choices that we make. The choices that we believe are the best interest of the ones we love. Including sometimes ourselves. It is good to love ourselves as well as others.
So, here, there are a few people that I love, that it feels like I shouldn’t be loving. That in loving, I risk hurting others that I love, because of social conventions of marriage and friendship and professionalism. Perhaps, I love those who are unworthy of my love, or who don’t return my love as fully as I would like them to. My love for them, too, is imperfect: it waivers, it hides, it fails. Fear and shame and anger all work against love. They are bad, they are wrong, in the wrong direction, in the negative aspect, but they are not to be avoided, they are to be accepted, to be understood and acknowledged as a sign of change and forgiven, and then they can help the turn towards good. That is the flaw, the crack, the sin, the suffering, the pain. That is the knowledge that might be somewhat unique to being human, and not an amoeba or a black hole. But I don’t know. Maybe black holes and HIV viruses suffer a great deal of shame and guilt for the destruction they spread, and maybe they too, can be forgiven.
When I am at peace, I feel all loving. I love the trees I walk by. I love the street. I love each person that walks by, I feel a sense of connection to them. I especially love my husband and my child. When I meditate, it all feels like a great sense of oneness, the energy. It is all love. And we are all expressions of that one love, and that one love wants to love us, and we, ultimately, want to love it.
But when? Where? In what way?
That, I think, is what religion has tried to work out, and politics, and culture as a whole…family, and marriage, and human love…art, I think, can be very good at trying to explore what does and does not get us to the experience of divine love consummated.
So, here I am, in my daily life, trying to find the right place, the right time, the right way, and yes, sometimes, the right person, with which to consummate divine love. I make mistakes all the time. I push and pull and control and obstruct the flow. I withhold my trust and faith and love and reject the flow. I put too much attention on the wrong person, the wrong object, and give not enough to the right person, the right object. How do I know that this is so? My feelings tell me so. My instinct. My heart. My God thread.
But it’s not always clear, you know, and there is much suffering in making choices, each and every day.
I have been thinking about what I heard a professor say to a class recently, that fear and excitement are the same reactions biologically.
It seems small minded and selfish to think that these mistakes I keep making in my affections add up to excitement. But maybe that’s as simple as it is. They bring novelty and difference when the rest of my life in all but unbearably routine and practical and plain and controlled and subdued. At least in comparison to how I wanted my life to be.
Sometimes if I pay very close attention I can be excited by the mundane. But it feels like a trick I play on myself, and it wears off, and then, I start to feel sad again, and want to escape.
So, none of this really seems about love. Which is probably the root of my problem. True love isn’t fearful or exciting. True love is consistent. It is peaceful.
I’d like to find a way to suffer just a little less, and try to make better choices easier and more often. That’s the way I think to resolve my loving problem.