I'd like to hear anybody's stories about a time when you loved someone who didn't love you back, and how you dealt with that. How did you feel? How did you heal? How long did it take?
I think the answer to your question is about “how” you love.
When I was young, I used to think love was about possession, an emotion entangled with sexuality and overt reciprocity... something to be counted, like money. God, how I suffered. How I made an ass of myself trying to impress a girl or two by trying to seem something far more attractive than ever I was. It was crass selfishness I was expressing, and I was one self-centred cyclone of noxious conceits as an adolescent/young adult. Looking back, I can hardly imagine why anyone went out with me. But they did and then we'd think or pretend that we'd broken each others' hearts.
Then I fell in love… really fell in love.
And I found love is everything that’s opposite to that.
Love is what frees us to express what we need to give if we are ever to blossom into some kind of fullness. It’s never about being loved back, it's about letting loose everything good you've ever inhaled... you can't hold it in for ever. Letting it out is liberation.
Putting energy into love puts life into living…
Love often -- perhaps most often -- achieves a perfection, a completeness, when it’s not reciprocated.
There are a number of people I hold in my love… male and female, young and old, familiar and foreign. I love my wife… and that is different because it is rooted in a life we share. My other loves are beyondsharing: our lives have crossed and intermingled in valuable, unforgetable ways; we have fed each other in various ways and continue to feed others. No, we are not always there for each other the way my wife and I are. No, there’s no sex to it. And it’s often been expressed more freely, more powerfully and effectively in one direction than the other at various times. And none of that diminishes the mutuality of gain. We have been channels of growth to each other... invaluable, cherished, loved.
I have taught: seniors, the dying, young trainee journalists and nurses, people working in newsrooms, aspiring writers and others… and I have become convinced that for a teacher to teach, he or she must love his or her students. It’s the only way to open them to the gifts you’re trying to give them, and it’s the only way you can give with a sufficiently generous heart. The return of love is felt when then go on to fuller lives.
I also have been a “boss” and I believe it’s essential for a manager to love his or her staff. It’s the only way you can make their job anything but exploitative; it’s the only way they can be freed to give of their best.
So I have lots of loves, ongoing, and they all feed and nourish the very particular love that’s between me and my wife.
It’s the only way that she and I can be generous enough in our loving to put up with each other… to always be seeking to make the other happier, more fulfilled, more complete, more wonderful.
“Love”, unfortunately, is a depreciated word. The real thing is almost painfully inexpressible… and it is as essential to life as breath itself. And, moreover, it is too big and powerful to be harnessed to a single relationship, to sexuality, to materiality or to possession, to demands or to expectations.
That was a wonderful post, MikePaterson. That's one of the things I most appreciate about WC - reading the posts, learning from them, being forced to think about things in a completely different way and to look at things through new eyes.
Comments
MikePaterson
Posted on: 01/26/2011 14:03
I think the answer to your question is about “how” you love.
When I was young, I used to think love was about possession, an emotion entangled with sexuality and overt reciprocity... something to be counted, like money. God, how I suffered. How I made an ass of myself trying to impress a girl or two by trying to seem something far more attractive than ever I was. It was crass selfishness I was expressing, and I was one self-centred cyclone of noxious conceits as an adolescent/young adult. Looking back, I can hardly imagine why anyone went out with me. But they did and then we'd think or pretend that we'd broken each others' hearts.
Then I fell in love… really fell in love.
And I found love is everything that’s opposite to that.
Love is what frees us to express what we need to give if we are ever to blossom into some kind of fullness. It’s never about being loved back, it's about letting loose everything good you've ever inhaled... you can't hold it in for ever. Letting it out is liberation.
Putting energy into love puts life into living…
Love often -- perhaps most often -- achieves a perfection, a completeness, when it’s not reciprocated.
There are a number of people I hold in my love… male and female, young and old, familiar and foreign. I love my wife… and that is different because it is rooted in a life we share. My other loves are beyond sharing: our lives have crossed and intermingled in valuable, unforgetable ways; we have fed each other in various ways and continue to feed others. No, we are not always there for each other the way my wife and I are. No, there’s no sex to it. And it’s often been expressed more freely, more powerfully and effectively in one direction than the other at various times. And none of that diminishes the mutuality of gain. We have been channels of growth to each other... invaluable, cherished, loved.
I have taught: seniors, the dying, young trainee journalists and nurses, people working in newsrooms, aspiring writers and others… and I have become convinced that for a teacher to teach, he or she must love his or her students. It’s the only way to open them to the gifts you’re trying to give them, and it’s the only way you can give with a sufficiently generous heart. The return of love is felt when then go on to fuller lives.
I also have been a “boss” and I believe it’s essential for a manager to love his or her staff. It’s the only way you can make their job anything but exploitative; it’s the only way they can be freed to give of their best.
So I have lots of loves, ongoing, and they all feed and nourish the very particular love that’s between me and my wife.
It’s the only way that she and I can be generous enough in our loving to put up with each other… to always be seeking to make the other happier, more fulfilled, more complete, more wonderful.
“Love”, unfortunately, is a depreciated word. The real thing is almost painfully inexpressible… and it is as essential to life as breath itself. And, moreover, it is too big and powerful to be harnessed to a single relationship, to sexuality, to materiality or to possession, to demands or to expectations.
It is the freedom of being.
LINK:
nosretap-ekim.blogspot.com/2010/12/whats-it-about-love.html
gecko46
Posted on: 01/26/2011 15:10
That was a wonderful post, MikePaterson. That's one of the things I most appreciate about WC - reading the posts, learning from them, being forced to think about things in a completely different way and to look at things through new eyes.
Elanorgold
Posted on: 01/26/2011 19:57
Tears in my eyes MikePaterson. Thankyou for that.