There are some subjects that most societies spend a lot more time talking about than doing anything about.
Religion in our society takes up an inordinate amount of talking time, yet seems to have very little impact on the actions of the talkers.
"For I was an hungred," Christianity's founder is supposed to have said, "and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in."
And I've always suspected that most people talked a lot more about sex than they actually did about it. The same can also be said about prayer and meditation -- and about all forms of piety. We tend to talk a lot about them, but we don't really do them all that often.
Love also falls into that category of talking/not doing subjects. But in the case of love, not doing anything about it can be a fatal mistake. We need love in our lives. We need to be in a state of loving.
Not doing anything about love can cost you your life.
Literally.
As the Swedish pop group ABBA sang: "Lovers live longer!" Research has shown that people in loving relationships live longer than other people. People who have regular sex live longer than people who don't. If you don't have enough love in your life, you could be shortening your own lifespan.
But not having love can take away your life another way as well. For the life lived without love in it is not really a whole life. You're missing a part of what being alive is all about if you don't have love in your life.
Now all this might seem obvious to you -- and it should be -- but many people have no idea how to go about getting the love they don't now have.
That's what this morning's talk is all about. How to get the love you need to really be alive.
First, we have to identify just what love is.
It's easier to explain what love isn't -- because we use the word quite loosely in this culture.
So what is love, anyway?
Love is the active, two-way expression of human worthwhileness.
In its simplest form, love is defined as "mutual affirmation of existence."
What this means is this:
Every child born needs affirmation. Needs reassurance that it's okay to be here, on this planet, in this time. Every child gets (or ought to get) that reassurance right from the beginning of life.
Those of us who don't get that reassurance right away (or who don't get enough of it) usually have problems with life. We lack self- assurance. We are always looking for that reassurance from the people around us.
The simple fact is that we need love. We need affirmation. We need that reassurance that we're okay. All our lives long. It never ends. Every human being needs to be affirmed in existence every day of his or her life.
That's why love is so important. Love keeps us emotionally and physically healthy. If we don't get it, we can sicken and die.
But the form of reassurance, of affirmation, we need is important. It isn't really love if it isn't life-supportive -- if it doesn't affirm our humanity. Real love carries the message: "You are a total, valuable human being."
This is why supporting or protecting another person is not love. If I make it unnecessary for you to meet your own needs (because I meet them for you), I am saying that you are less than a full human being.
In Ibsen's The Doll's House, Nora at one point tells her husband of eight years: "You didn't love me. You enjoyed being in love with me." What she was saying was this. Thorvald enjoyed the pretense of love. He showered her with gifts -- he provided all her needs -- he acted as if he was in love with her. But the reality was that he failed to give her what she really needed: acceptance as a human being, acknowledgement that her opinions counted, reassurance that she was important. He didn't love her.
The message of love is that the loved one is a valuable human being, of importance on their own right and not because of their relationship to someone else.
Love is saying "you're okay" through one's actions.
There are four stages of love:
Remember my definition of love above? Love is the active, two-way expression of human worthwhileness.
Love has very little to do with verbal expression. It has a lot to do with action. Only the actions count.
Love only works when our actions toward the loved one are life- affirming. If you say "I love you" and treat the person like a non-person, you are not acting lovingly. Such a state can be called "Archie Bunker" love. This character from TV's All In the Family, would say he loved his wife, Edith, but he always acted as if she were some kind of moron.
Regrettably, All In the Family (like The Doll's House a century earlier) simply reflected the way families have functioned in most civilizations for the past four thousand years. Women have been treated -- in law and in religion -- as non-human beings.
As long as a person is being treated as a sub-human, there can be no love -- no reassurance of human worthwhileness. First, because the non-human person can get no affirmation. And conversely, because the "love" of a non-being is valueless as well. If a man doesn't consider his wife fully human, how can he rely on her to affirm his own humanness?
This is, I believe, the root cause of so much mental illness in the world today: We are merely seeing the natural result of four thousand years of non-loving. Husbands and wives could not love one another simply because society denied the humanity of the wives. Nor could they truly love their own children for they hadn't truly been loved themselves. And children saw role models not of love, but of slavery and abuse.
Love is an active principle. If you want to love someone you must act as if that person were a valuable human being (which of course every person is).
Love requires then three elements. Miss one of these elements and you don't have love.
The first element is: affirmation of life. This is the reassurance we all need that it's okay to be here, in this time and place.
The second element of love is: action. Words don't count. Only actions which are in themselves life-affirming.
And the third element is: mutuality. This is the main topic this morning. For love to function it must be mutual. A two-way street.
Martin Buber defined love as "mutual affirmation of existence." Two beings saying I-Thou to each other simultaneously. We meet. We forget all the adjectives we know about each other, that define ourselves as separate, alien creatures. We recognize -- if but for an instant -- the unique "thou-ness" of each other. We fuse. In that moment we find our own identity as a unique human being -- through finding the other's unique identity.
Two strangers meet. One smiles and says "Good morning." The other smiles back. For an instant, they are one. Then the moment passes. (Hi! -- "You have a right to be here.")
Two friends meet. Share a few moments together. They obviously like each other. For a moment or two, they are one. (I like you! -- "I'm happy that you are you.")<p> Two long-time friends come together. Share deep feelings -- sorrow or joy -- with each other. For a while of tears or laughter, they are one. (I love you. -- "I want to share your world.")
Two lovers agree to share their lives together. They respect and care for each other. They share times of total togetherness -- legs and bodies intertwined in physical fusion. For these whiles, they are one. (I'm in love with you. -- "I want to be one with you.")
Martin Buber looked at love and reality with a mystic's eyes, but that is probably the only way to really see love. For love, at whatever stage, is a mystic experience. A fusion with another in an ancient ritual of rebirth.
All three elements are necessary: life-affirmation, action, and mutuality.
We might then define the state of love as:
The wordless dialogue two people can become when each acts as if the other were important.
It's important to remember that the state of love, at whatever level, is a fusion -- a coming together into something that did not exist before. We become a dialogue -- a conversation. We don't have a dialogue. Quite the contrary! We become one.
So. Enough theory already. So how do you find love in your life? A "Manual" is supposed to show you how to do it, right?
Knowing what love is, and knowing what the three elements of love are, you are now in a position to find love. Here are some pointers:
Remember what love is: The active, two-way expression of human worthwhileness.
And the state of love is: The wordless dialogue two people can become when each acts as if the other is important.
Action.
Affirmation of life and personal value.
Mutuality.
Without all three, you don't really have love.
Namaste!