Lessons in Love

It's Christmas time, the heart of winter, just over the solstice hill. There is nothing like time off of work or school, drifts of cold snow, blustery cold air, power outages and long dark nights to remind one of essentials. Essentials like love.

Love, as an emotion is something everyone has experience and knowledge of. The importance of love also becomes painfully apparent when we lose it or it is betrayed. Yes, love is an emotion. A very important one. But it is also more.

Love is a verb. Love is a skill.

And as such, love can be developed. Love can be learned. And I'm not just talking about mushy romantic love. There are many kinds of love. Why don't we give it a better lexicon, and build upon that a better understanding, a proper place in the hallowed halls of learning, in our government departments, and just maybe in some incredible outcomes for all of us? I wish I could enroll in university and obtain a Major in Love, a PhD even, from a legitimate School or Department in Love. Come on Harvard and Stanford, Oxford and McGill. Get with the program! You're supposed to be institutes of "higher" learning. What is higher in life than experience, knowledge and wisdom in love? Doesn't it deserve its own field of study? Don't we need more of that kind of Doctor in the world? I'd like to meet a Dr. of Love that the system doesn't categorically classify as a quack by definition.

I know such a department would be multidisciplinary: psychology, philosophy, medicine, biology/evolution/ecology, geography, sociology, theology, polysci... But aren't multidisciplinary studies all the rage these days? Nanotech is multidisciplinary, and we're investing billions in nanotech. Global warming is multidisciplinary, and heaven knows how we are investing there. We've also been investing WAY more in war for centuries. How much are we investing in love?

Um, like, Mr. Speaker Sir, isn't this negligence in love maybe, just a little bit, responsible perchance, for our habit of fighting soooo much? Divorce? World Wars? No?

At the same time, there IS a lot felt, said and written about love. There is much wisdom out there in the ways of love. We have come a long way (baby) in our lessons in love.
As the wisdom of the east inflitrates the west, as psychologists slowly figure out what works and doesn't in relationships, and as science gradually finds its ways into tracing the linkages between the mind, heart, our biochemistry and sense of well being, we just might be starting to trace a solid path to the land where love lives.

So, along with the industrial age, the information age, and the advances in science over the last 100 years there has been another revolution going on. More subtly, silently. An evolution of heart. A revolution of love. Not just in our ability to choose the one we would like to marry as opposed to arranged marriages, or the free love movement of the 60's. Deeper. Wider.

I think this is a revolution we need to look into more, fund more, study more, write more news & magazine articles about, more dissertations on, and form those university departments to study. Legitimize love, as a field, as an honorable path of study. Conflict resolution and prevention for instance. These are learnable skills. Shouldn't we ALL get to learn them? Not just some specialists? What kind of world could we build for ourselves with this kind of R&D and education spending? K through 12, kids educated in proper conflict resolution and mediation skills, not just some anti-bullying lessons now and then? Heck, I even think the Pentagon should put in a wing for Love and Peace. Who would want to bomb that?

The personal IS political is it not? So, how about a New Year's resolution to make a more loving world? Start with the personal, and if you are politically involved, let the love infiltrate your office, your department, your division, your state, your country. Be like Don Quixote, knight errant, unafraid to be the fool. And, if we band together, we'll get strength in numbers.

I KNOW, it sounds "cheesy". I doubted myself even writing this "silly" post! And, if I were to read this post, written by a stranger, my knee-jerk reaction would probably be, "Geez, that is so airy fairy and cheesy sounding!" Why is that? Why do I have a negative reaction to talking and reading about love? Especially since I actually LIKE cheese? Why do I typically kill making conversation about love before I even start? I've learned to catch myself, but I know this is my auto program.

Do you do this? Do you kill the seeds of love from sprouting in you too in this quiet secret sabotaging way? Like it's OK to talk about with your partner, or a very good friend, but only in certain contexts, and even then it's probably awkward to say the least? Or if you DO talk about love, don't you get the LOOK, you know the condescending, slightly mocking one that signals that you just fell a rung in his/her estimation? Nothing like unvoiced scorn to kill a conversation before it even begins.

Thank-you poets
The troubadours of Aquitaine, in Medieval France, knew about love. A different kind of love than was known at that time. They talked and sang about love. They literally waxed poetic. Their main subject was love. The beautiful story of Tristan and Isolde, a likely precursor to Romeo & Juliet, stemmed from their bardic tradition. But the troubadours song was eventually silenced too. Poets know this, and have lamented it ever since.

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon—O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih

- TS Elliot, The Wasteland

The unicorn, a symbol of love, is hunted down in this Medieval tapestry.

Truth is, we have to watch out for our immediate reactions to things. Catching them is part of the tricks of the trade of meditation. It's the heart of rescinding prejudice and beginning of awareness to catch our pre-programmed knee-jerk reactions in action. Don't pretend you don't have them. We all do, whether it's some sort of learned social paradigm, or genetic inclinations. Calling something "cheesy" or "flaky" is exactly the kind oppressive abusive language that signals you've got chains on certain thought in your mind. It's good to double check those chains from time to time to make sure you have limits on the right things.

Well, I for one want to free love, which is like the proverbial elephant that has come to be used to being tied down by a chain from birth, that it could in reality easily snap as an adult. Well, as adults, we shouldn't be afraid to be branded as poofs or wusses or flakes if we talk about love. So here I am, pulling my rope, yanking your chain.


Talking about peace and love is NOT just hippy talk. It's good common sense. It's central to psychological health and well being. It's the pillar of a happy family life. It's the substance relationships are built on. It's even hard core business practice, because trust goes hand and hand with love, and trust is beneficial, if not essential to maintaining trade relations, is it not? What happened to things like someone's word being their honour? Let's reinstate THAT kind of thing. Chivalry without the crusade. Hippy without the stoned. Ok, we may get hit by a few windmills like Don Quixote along the way, but haven't we been getting whacked way worse by wars fought for dubious reasons way longer anyhow?

I think most people would at least agree on this. Without some sort of love -- be it for work, friends, partner, family, spirit -- life pretty much sucks. So why don't we develop our skills in making it?

Interested? Google it. Get books on it. Talk about it. Take those "wishy washy" courses on love with your partner. Bug your colleagues and boss about it. Write to your MP. I think we all should have the right for the time and proper social training in love. It's core to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is it not? I want my kids to have access to that kind of training, not just math, reading and computer science. Don't you? Once upon a time there existed no swimming lessons nor lifeguards. Many more people drowned back them. Some smart person institutionalized swimming and life saving lessons. Similarly, haven't enough people drowned in the sea of love? Don't high divorce stats scientifically back that up? I say it's about time we had some legit lessons and life lines for staying afloat in the proverbial sea of love. It's not just a metaphor. It's real, and we need more than a bailout. I'd like to live in a "state" of love. Wouldn't you?

Resources on Love
Here are just a few of the growing resources on love from academic sources that speak to the history of love, how it works, and how we can make it work better, personally and politically:

• A Stanford Encyclopedia definition of love
  
• Hisoria Amoris, by Edgar Saltus 1906
• The Philosophy of Love: by Dr. Alexander Mosely
• Philosophy of Love in the Western World: MIT Open Courseware
  
• Love is More Powerful than Sex: a Robert Roy Britt article in Live Science
  
• It's Good to be Good 2008, a scientific report (.pdf) by Dr. Stephen G. Post
• Eros, Agape & Philia: Readings in the Philosophy of Love, by Alan Soble
• A list of articles on the science of love
  

And before I go, a few excerpts from one of my favourite books, True Love, featured at the bottom of this post. A small and succinct book, but to the point from zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, who has devoted his life to learning about and practicing love. It's about time this message of the east found it's way to the systems of the west. It's about time we worked this kind of love into the machine.

"Understanding is the essence of love. Training is necessary to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice deep looking directed toward the person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly. If you cannot understand, you cannot love...Without understanding, love is an impossible thing... We must be there, attentive; we must observe...The practice of understanding is the practice of meditation. To meditate is to look deeply into the heart of things... If there is no joy in love, it is not true love. If you are suffering all the time, if you cry all the time, and if you make the person you love cry, this is not really love--it is even the opposite. If there is no joy in your love, you can be sure that it is not true love...

To love...is above all to be there. But being there is not an easy thing. Some training is necessary, some practice. If you are not there, how can you love? Being there is very much an art, the art of meditation, because meditating is bringing your true presence to the here and now. The question that arises is: Do you have time to love?" In love you attain true freedom. In true love, you attain freedom. When you love, you bring freedom to the person you love. If the opposite is true, it is not true love. You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free, not only outside, but also inside."

So for this Christmas, for 2009 & future years, and for the here and now, this is my question to myself, and the question I offer you. Are you making time for more love? Are you feeling free in your love? Have you asked your loved ones lately if they are feeling free in your love? Are you investing enough attention and resources into the love in your life?

We might not know, or be able to control climate change, or the global economy, but we CAN get to know, tend to and control our own hearts better. Can't we? Am I just being a flake, or am I making a valid point here? What do you think? Isn't it about time we took love seriously? Through things like government departments, budgets, and education? For one, I think Obama, as president of what is still the most powerful country in the world, should set an example by setting up a Ministry of Love/Peace. Want to start a letter campaign on that one? And I think he should appoint people like Thich Nhat Hanh, who actually really know what they are talking about, to advise on the board thereof. Make the political personal again.

We've reached outer space and mapped distant stars and planets. How much farther out "there" do we need to travel before the black holes we've left behind in our own hearts threaten to implode? Perhaps the systematic destruction we're now globally seeing on the Earth is just a reflection of the deficient inner landscape of our very own aching hearts? Perhaps when we've legitimately, systematically come together to properly chart the territory of our constant beating hearts, we'll finally reach the promised land. We will come not only to believe in, but experience true love, and in doing so, we will authentically, finally be free.