To Love and Be Loved

 Sam Keen...

…who has broken bread with the best of them (Robert Bly, Joseph Campbell, Michael Meade) weighs in on the phenomenon of love and cares to tell us a thing or two about it. “Why are our definitions so narrow and impoverished?" he wonders, and that got me to wondering as well. Knowing that the words “I love you" tend to stick in my throat most of the time, I suddenly wondered if maybe I wasn't applying the phrase too sparsely and sparingly in my life, holding onto on to it like it was the secret formula for Coca Cola.

There’s a likely explanation, to wit, “the sad news is that we frequently know about the necessity for love because of the void and violence created when we were ignored, injured , abused, and abandoned or betrayed by those who loved us unwisely or not at all. Nothing dramatizes the necessity and centrality of love in human life more than its absence.” Tell me about it, 40 + years of psychotherapy and counting, trying to cauterize the wounds.   

“I can offer no final explanation for why we idealize love so much and practice it so little”, Mr. Keen ventures to say. At least I’m not alone in my wilderness of confusion and yearning. I flash on those enigmatic lines from Leonard Cohen’s magnum opus Hallelujah “maybe there’s a god above but all I’ve ever know of love is how to shoot somebody who out drew ‘ya”

He adds “what troubles me is not that we are so interested in coupling, but that we are so uninterested in the other varieties of love that might give our lives greater meaning and dignity." Not that’s a telling accusation. Guilty as charged. I’ve not only confined it to a narrow slice of human experience but also ladened it with an expectation of such an impossibly high level of emotional integrity it’s no wonder I can’t speak the words. It’s as if I expect to be hauled into court for malpractice if I don’t use the words precisely and with 100% unconditional sincerity. (It's that or “I love you but you pissed me off so I going mum”)

And here's another thing. It turns out it's a skill and something you have to develop in practice. Who knew?!! I did always think it would strike me down from my horse like Saul on the road to Damascus. Despite having had to work at acquiring every bit of knowledge and skill that I can now say I possess, it never occurred to me that love would require the same dedication and perseverance. 

Keen throws down the gauntlet: “The first and most important question any person can ask is: how can I become a more loving human being?” As I find myself retreating safely into my professorial persona to answer this question he intercepts me with the warning “Love is not a spectator sport. There are existential questions that are risky and can be answered authentically only in the first person singular”. Then, for good measure he adds “… in the final analysis becoming a loving person is not a matter of philosophical analysis or psychoanalysis. It is only when I am willing to do the truth and enact love that I discover the meaning of my life.”  Ok so this could take a while. 

My Amorous Autobiography

The very first question out of the box is "who do you love right now and in what ways?" Perplexing question as it turns out. I start with my siblings and I struggle to say something more than “I love them because they are my siblings”. Not a lot of insight in that attempt.

… to be continued