“We can live without religion and meditation, but
we cannot survive without human affection.”
- Dali Lama
Early mornings are a good time to read. It gets the day going and beats the morning news. Adam Grant's Think Again stimulated an email to an old friend.
My note closed with this, “I have loved and appreciated you for many years and for many reasons, but during this morning’s read…even more!”
His unexpected response:
“Your email to me was something very special. Most guys, especially guys that have been to war like us, are too macho to be sensitive, to show affection to other men. But you plowed right through that unwritten law and it really touched me….”
Let’s back this up…
Let’s talk a little about love – the context here.
We often get caught up in vocabulary because it’s all we know to express feelings to one another. When I was younger, vocabulary words were the alphabet – the precursor for finding meaningful ways to communicate.
Since I had no understanding of how to express feelings of affection outside my immediate family (a little more on that coming), words and definitions were the only way I knew.
As a young person, I understood there were different shades and textures to the meaning of love but Idea needed exploration. First stop, a dictionary, the all-knowing residence of words.
I discovered that loving my family was reflected by the Greek word ‘storge.’ That was good to know. Church people talked about a broader kind of love for mankind – agape. I could see that. I was getting somewhere.
There were more Greek words:
- Phila (deep friendship),
- Philauta (self-love),
- Ludus (playful love),
- Eros (passionate love)
Holy cow!! I discovered the partial list above was just the beginning of my journey to understanding this thing called love. Thank goodness for those Greeks. I mean, how else would we know about love in our language!!
Let’s see, my best friend in high school. Yep, that was Phila. My girlfriend…hmm – eros with a touch of Ludus maybe. But then I was hoping for Phila with her as well - sadly unrequited. Coming from a home with a deep social conscience, the emphasis was, of course, agape.
To be fair, I never said to my best friend that our relationship was founded on Phila. And it would have been embarrassing to tell my girlfriend that eros was the basis of our relationship. It was hard enough to keep these words and their definitions straight. Over time they seemed to shape-shift and blend from one to the other. Yikes!
An informative aside…
I was fortunate to have had a maternal mentor who taught me to love myself and other people.
She would say, "If it's true that you should love your neighbor as yourself, then you need to love yourself." I suppose the Greeks would have called that Philautia (self-love). This was not self-absorptive narcissism but rather an appreciation for the gift of life. She didn't need to give me a definition. The words from her mouth to my ear were enough to seal the belief in my mind. To me, truth, plain and simple. The result? I genuinely love myself!
Over the years, I have asked people in workshops, “If you ask me for five dollars and I don’t have it. Can I give it to you?” Strangely, they often think it’s a trick question.
Continuing the thought, I say, “If I have three dollars, I can give you that, but I can't give what I don't have.”
Loving our neighbor as ourselves implies we must love ourselves! Loving ourselves, my mother would have suggested, is the full five dollars!
Moving on…
Over time, it became clear no vocabulary was good enough to express these different layers of affection. I learned love could be a smile to a stranger, a quiet conversation of support, a knowing look, a subtle touch, or an intimate sexual experience. These feelings or experiences were not exclusive, nor independent of one another. They were a continuum reflecting the resonance I felt with the people in my life. The key was learning to know what was suitable and when.
Like everything, good sailors come from navigating stormy seas. I’ve made a fair number of mistakes telling folks I loved them and then unwisely trying to push the wet noodle uphill. This usually happened because I wasn’t listening or paying attention.
Trust and understanding take time and sensitivity. Unfortunately, gun-jumping can create an environment that sometimes never recovers. That is disappointing.
We all receive words and feelings based on the worlds within which each of us lives. There is a difference between saying I love you and I am in love with you. I’ve frequently been apt to say the former, seldom the latter. Some difficult lessons were learned when the expression of affection was not given nor taken with a shared spirit of understanding.
This was often the case with the men I have known in my life. Maybe it's a reflection of the discomfort many men have ("...too macho...") expressing affection to one another. Most show their feelings through comradeship like hunting, athletic events, recalling stories of valor or embarrassment, and teasing. Good-natured bantering usually happens between close friends and is, in my experience, always a way of saying, I love you. And that is usually good enough!
Love within our species is a way of projecting safety and comfort. Each of us craves that feeling. I suppose that’s why it is so deeply embedded in our humanity and why we feel vulnerable in expressing it for fear of rejection. Telling someone you love them, at whatever level on the scale of resonance, should not be a threat or a sign of weakness - rather, it should be a sign of strength.
The closing note to my friend came from a brain-to-fingers in a slipstream of unconsciousness. It was an expression of deep gratitude for having had him a part of my life for so many years. It was as natural as breathing.
Thanks, mum!
- ted
