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Today's
Meditation:
Rachel
Remen says that there's really no such thing as
unconditional love-- that love by its very nature is
unconditional, and if there are conditions involved, it's
not love at all, but something else. I've come to
agree with her. We spend a lot of time trying to
categorize love-- romantic love, brotherly love, platonic
love-- but the truth is simply that love is love, and we
can have the same love for our neighbor that we have for
our spouse and children and parents, because love is love,
and we should love all people equally and without
condition.
I
love my wife, but I love the children that I teach just as
much. The relationship that I have is of course very
different than the relationships I have with children, but
the love is the same. My wife and I share many
things that I share with no one else, but I also share
things with my students that I don't share with my wife--
I
don't ever give her homework, for example. But all
that I do in all of my relationships is to give all I can
to help the other to grow and learn in her or his own
ways, to become themselves.
If I
love you, all that matters to me is your well-being.
It's not up to me to mold you or shape you, just to do
what I can to help you to be well. I need to support
and encourage my students, of course, but I also need to
challenge them and set limits for them. If I love
them, I try to figure out their needs and do what I can to
meet them in the context of my relationship with
them. When we define love narrowly, though, we also
limit the good that we're able to do for those we love.
Love
isn't something that just "happens" to us.
We have moments of great attraction, but that's not what
love is. Love is something that we do-- something
that we work at, that we practice, that we make efforts to
achieve. And the more we love, the easier it
becomes. And the more the other people in our lives
feel the benefit of our love.
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For further
thought:
Love has nothing to do
with what you are expecting
to get--only what
you are expecting to give-- which is
everything. What you will receive
in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give.
You give because you love and cannot help giving. If you are very lucky,
you may be loved back. That is delicious, but it does not necessarily happen.
Katharine Hepburn
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