If I accept people as they are, I am loving them even when I can't stand them. Right? So when someone I love (supposedly) can only communicate with me by airing their upsets, annoyances and endless ways they have been wronged...I just accept it, if I love them. I wouldn't tell them to change. I wouldn't put rules on the type of communication I would allow them to bring to me. I would just see that this is a suffering person. This is a person who is stuck in a vicious cycle of victim-hood that was created long ago and has been nothing but reinforced everyday and in every thought.
I am not that loving person. I hear the dissent and my skin pricks, the muscles tighten around my neck and my jaw clenches. I am not listening anymore and am instead running through all the reasons I cannot stand to be in this conversation anymore. I have become resentful. I have created reason upon reason for why I am right about this person's griping being pathetic and selfish. I am so removed from a position of loving that I can hardly touch this person without feeling awkward and distant.
The only person I really love is my child. I don't know of another person who I love in every moment, regardless of her momentary mood or behavior. I see her acting out and I wonder what the hurt is, what the need is that isn't being fulfilled. I know this is true for every person. The acting out fills a void. We are mostly creatures that interact with the acting-out parts of each other, instead of loving through that moment and discovering what is really going on.
The person I most work on loving is my husband.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I am an amateur lover. I have trained myself over time to love sparingly and with great caution. I clearly see how this does myself and others a disservice. I worry that I will inadvertently pass this sometimes painful trait on to my babies. I have an extraordinary opportunity to practice loving over the next few days. To say it out loud sounds like a silly, simple task. Just to love someone. Yet the thought of releasing all the stored up resentments, with whom I've become close and friendly, presents itself as scary.
I think we're all amateurs, save for the saints. It's part of being human. To love is to open ourselves to the possibility of sorrow, but without it we are closed to joy. One comes with the other.
ReplyDeleteAnd that is worth the possibily of anything.