Incredible Love

Perhaps up to 67% of the songs of the past decade have been about love, or so AI informs me. If we could examine all the songs and poems in recorded history, the number would undoubtedly be much, much higher. Sentient creatures and humans are drawn to love and caring as they’re repulsed by loneliness and hate, but we aren’t always talking about romance. We need to belong. We need to feel loved from our first interactions. Love establishes our sense of value. We need to be joined. We crave community. We operate according to the authenticity of our self-love. Distorted love can distort personalities, creating emotional illness. But I suspect that the deep sensation of connection and appreciation that we call unconditional love when we’re experiencing Greek loves such as philia (deep friendship and loyalty) or agape, (a universal, selfless love for all people, nature and a higher power), those feelings are deeper and often underpin romantic or erotic love that can flourish in long relationships.

Today as our social focus highlights conflicts, material gain, and sexual attraction, we may take the deeper loves for granted, as though they’re easier to nourish. They aren’t and never were. Texts utilize chatter that may or may not carry true meaning.

Many people never experience the luxury of a profound love—sometimes due to their own inability to be unselfish or empathetic enough, sometimes because they were under the influence of divisive forces. Science has proven that projected love is a power that can help heal wounds of many types. Conversely, the lack of love can fester as jealousy that drives people to cruelty and violence. Isolated people from non-nurturing populations or families envy those from close knit family or cultural groups often without realizing that as the source of their fury. Their envy easily turns to resentment, prejudice, and hate at the perceived unfairness. Illusions of superiority soothe their fear of inadequacy. Demonstrations of force replace demonstrations of love.

As we approach the holiday season when death becomes more common as a chosen expression of finale (the number of deaths rise), we see what can happen when people lose a closely bonded loved one. Being told the spirit survives on a higher plane rarely mollifies the pain of perceived loss. The hole in daily life looms cold and dark. Some can adapt to an inevitable change in relationship to resist being degraded into lesser beings and even find ways to mold the pain into an instrument of caring or growth to honor the one who died. Likewise, as American society emphasizes newly minted divisions, negativity and lack of compassion poison amiability. Many fall into depression at the disillusionment. Perhaps our country isn’t uniquely good? Saying it doesn’t seem to make it true. Illnesses born of stress proliferate.

How can good-hearted people celebrate occasions of love in the midst of cold cruelty done in their name? We have to believe that love must flow robustly around the hard edges of hate and division, and—like moving water—will eventually wear the sharp edges down if we refuse to let go of all that makes living in connection beautiful. Love is our only hope for continued emotional health. Each of us has a responsibility to share soft compassion, carrying light and humor and truth and caring with us everywhere. We must perpetually highlight the contrast between hate and love and the worlds they make possible. We must remember what love looks like in action. Some insist two opposing worlds are emerging, but even if they aren’t, two societies will stand strong—one dark and one bright, the origin of ancient martyrs. Before the version of religion that was carefully re-designed by men to control, religion was love. We live in the world we maintain within ourselves because that is what we reproduce..