To be loved, love

№ 25 ☼ Love ☼ Empathy ☼ Peace ☼ 975 words ☼ 4 minutes

“I can show you a love philtre, compounded without drugs, or herbs, or witch’s spell: If you want to be loved, love.” — Hecato of Rhodes

When we are at peace with ourselves, we can begin to be at peace with other people. That isn’t easy, however. It is a struggle to live, to be a person. Other people struggle with life just as much as we do. Sometimes more. To make matters worse, we often cause others to suffer because we behave ignorantly towards them in the midst of our struggle for survival. We hurt each other. We offend each other. We are unkind, uncaring, selfish, and sometimes hateful. Peace with ourselves is hard enough. Peace with each other seems impossible.

The concept of peace is very elusive. We can feel we have it in one moment and lose it entirely in the next. In fact, the morning I sat down to write this, I had just grabbed my favorite blanket and a cup of hot coffee when, simultaneously, the dog threw up on our bed and my little daughter accidentally broke the toilet. Nothing quite like trying to fix a toilet when it won’t flush down a… well, I’ll spare you. You see? I thought I was going to have an idyllic, peaceful morning, and it was taken away from me very quickly! The boys will be up soon, and the momentum of the day will begin in full force (typing this as Duplo blocks crash to the wooden floor. Sigh.). This is real life, though, and we have little control over such occurrences. Yet it is precisely these “small things” that steal our peace away, if we let them. And once we lose peace, we lose joy. Once we lose those things, we begin to lose our love, which is when we treat each other differently. 

There are worse things than a sick dog or a smelly broken toilet. A few days after writing that part, my wife hurt her back and is completely incapacitated. I have been responsible for my normal workload as well as the kids, the house and helping her. To say I am stressed beyond my capacity is an understatement. And, of course we have all been living under the shadow of something for two years, and it has stolen more than our peace. At this point, we are all just trying to hold what remains of our lives intact. How can we talk of being at peace during such times? This is precisely why I write these meditations, week after week: I firmly believe there is a path through all suffering. The way is love. Is that too touchy-feely? Too overly-spiritual? Perhaps it is. I am certainly open-minded and willing to explore other paths. I have looked for them my whole life. So far, none have appeared.

Love for ourselves produces love for others. It creates peace within us and peace between us. To have peace is to have a kind of stability in our lives. When things feel stable, it is easier to be generous and loving to one another. But what are we to do if all of us feel that we have run out of margin or that we have nothing left to give? There is no other answer I have found — to be loved, love. And our love must be genuine, so it must be consistent regardless of circumstances. Further, we cannot expect reciprocity. People are asleep. They are victims of their programming, going about their lives unaware of what other people are thinking, feeling, or experiencing. They are caught up in their own circumstances. It is on us to be the loving ones.

What do we do when we encounter unloving or cruel people? Do we punish them for their ignorance? That is ruthlessness. Punishing the ignorant is not the same as punishing the innocent, but they both produce the same result: suffering. So then, do we try to ignore them? No, because then we become ignorant, and that will cause blindness. There is only one path: Love, and do not expect to receive love back. However, there is a mystery: If your love is genuine, you will receive it back in some way, shape, or form. It is the same with pain. If you lash out in pain, that is what you will invite back into yourself. If what you need most is lacking in your life, you must first give it away. If you want to receive love, you must be the one who loves first.

It is not glamorous to focus on these matters of the heart. Kindness, empathy, love, and compassion are not often accompanied by fanfare. You cannot brag to your friends that you were polite. Indeed, suppose you practice these things to get attention. In that case, you will receive very little reward and will soon abandon them altogether. These practices cannot be about the feeling I obtain for the good that I do. It is a generous, gracious way of living. You are often giving away what is undeserved and unmerited. 

People who receive love and grace when they know they didn’t earn it tend to do the same thing for other people. You can’t help it. The world doesn’t feel balanced when you’re constantly receiving good things but not making any effort to give them out. When we receive a good thing, we want to share it. We want others to have the peace and goodness that we have found. It is not so that we can feel good about ourselves, nor is it to validate our beliefs. Once you have awoken and experienced true love, you know it is the only thing that can save us - it is the only way to peace. And you want everyone to know about it.