What better subject for Christmas than exploring our myriad notions of love? The original version of this column was published in 2002. Not a thing has changed since that time.
Americans seem to enjoy abusing our emotional words. The one that leaps to mind is how we've turned "love" into a buzzword for our feelings about everything from burgers to beagles and each other.
I love Christmas and cheeseburgers. I love my children and grandchildren. I also love dogs, friends and relatives, music, art and other things. Yet while I profess all this love, the word obviously means something different for each experience.
What if I said to daughter Anna: "I'd love to get a burger and love it if you'd come along, since I love you and you love riding in the car, and I'd love if we'd bring your dog Simba along because I love her, too, and dogs do love a good car ride. Why don't we slap in a CD because we all love music?"
For gosh sakes, people, can't we just "like" something anymore? The phenomenon of love has provided fodder over the ages for philosophers, perhaps beginning with Aristotle, who called it two bodies and one soul.
Sounds romantic, eh? But there also can be a sinister side to abusing this powerful word for personal gain. Males learn during the high-hormone teen years that misusing the word with females in a seemingly sincere tone sometimes can lead to immediate gratification. Some females can do that, too, but not nearly as often.
Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's 1978 bestseller, The Road Less Traveled, spoke a lot about the experience we call love and being in love. He said what we often think and hope is love is simply our "cathecting" of a person or thing. You can form a close personal attachment (cathexis) with a car, a friend or a member of the opposite sex without actually loving them.
But one might mistakenly want or assume this attachment to be genuine love, so that's what they call it. Peck contrasts cathexis and romantic love (which in most instances lasts only several months) with the qualities of mature love.
The mature version, he says, is created from emotional bonds hammered tough in the fires of selflessness and shared overcoming, experiences and hardships. Authentic love between humans, he says, is the desire and effort to advance the spiritual development of another.
Now that's my view of love at its most significant. Conversely, young lovers who marry during the giddy rush of cathexis, when the hormonal highs of romantic love prompt them to be in love with being in love, often find there's no cement to tightly bind their relationship. Like a pretty pink balloon spent of helium, their lust and passion inevitably drift back to earth often to burst on the harsh realities of day-to-day living.
The late, controversial Jesuit priest Anthony DeMello said to truly love another person, we must first disassociate ourselves from dependence. We must learn to enjoy being alone with ourselves and free from addictive personalities and diversions, along with a needless reliance upon others. Dependence, he said, is certainly not love, and is an enormous barrier to authentic love.
It's bothersome in this disposable age how this complex word jewel of the philosophers and poets rolls so conveniently off our tongues. When all the heavy breathing fades, making this word mean whatever we might think or want it to mean further robs its clarity and meaning.
I discussed this point with various classes of eager 19-year-olds during my teaching years at Ohio State University, asking them to explain what they felt the word meant.
Definitions became predictable with each class: Caring, bonding, adoring, sharing, respecting, admiring, lusting, commitment, more than liking, feeling drawn to and close to, wanting to have, passion, connected spiritually and romance.
Then I'd ask whether they felt it might be more clear to describe their feelings using more accurate, specific words rather than relying on this single word that applies to all of them in different ways. Why use but a single catch-all word to describe one's affections for everything from filet mignon to each other? If you appreciate the intricacies of what the word means to you, there's value in choosing the fuller explanations that spark your feelings, i.e., "Your smile is so appealing. It makes me feel close to you."
St. Paul assured us that love is patient and kind and slow to anger and is not boastful. That makes perfect sense to me.
Author C.S. Lewis, in The Four Loves, published in 1960, said he believes love exists in four basic forms: physical love between humans; friendship; affection for relatives; and finally, love for things not like us such as pets and flowers and food and a creator. I'm impressed Lewis recognized the confusion over the meaning of this word so long ago.
But I'm still not certain his honest message stuck.
Here's hoping you loved this column. Merry Christmas.
------------v------------
Mike Masterson's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected].
Editorial on 12/25/2016