On unconditional love
For a long time, I have felt that I was not capable of love. I am not really sentimental. I probably read too many novels and watched too many romantic comedies. The dissonance between those fictions and real life just was too great. Easier to simply reject the notion of love than commit to the true labor of it.
Obviously, that's not the end of it, as I am married and have children. There is plenty of dissonance, but I strive to make the daily, minute-to-minute, choice to live with it, through it, to build a life in spite of it. There may be nothing that can prepare you for it. It's all trial and error and hope that you all are made of strong, resilient stuff.
Absolutely, the most difficult part is being loving when you don't feel like it. It's almost natural to fall into self-pity when your kids and your spouse aren't listening. To retreat from our mantra, "I love you, no matter what," to lick our ego's wounds. Fear and anxiety start to encroach. Fear and anxiety that your kids are becoming ungrateful and entitled, that your spouse is not capable of meeting your needs, that you are failing at these relationships.
Frequently you are failing these relationships. I maintain a good deal of skepticism toward the idea that we are all on an ultimate positively-trending trajectory. We only know what is present before us, and we look back through that same lens. But somehow there is always another chance, another opportunity to be generous, to be kind, to give the benefit of the doubt, to bear the unpleasantness, to forgive, to learn, to do better despite how we've failed in the past.
It's not a matter of success or failure anyway. I am as capable of loving unconditionally as any other human being, which is to say, I do so in utterly flawed and inadequate ways. I like to think that I am teaching my kids to be better at love, but I know that all our human shortcomings will be passed along. It is impossible to avoid, and figuring out how to unconditionally love each other and everyone around us is the epic work to which we must all be committed. That is how we build our humanity.
More and more, the only framework I rely on to move through this world is unconditional love. It's not a facile trap into which I bleed my heart. It is a tough, radical, discomforting, heart-breaking, perhaps doomed endeavor. Maybe this is the path to transcendence, but at the very least, this is the path that I choose.
Obviously, that's not the end of it, as I am married and have children. There is plenty of dissonance, but I strive to make the daily, minute-to-minute, choice to live with it, through it, to build a life in spite of it. There may be nothing that can prepare you for it. It's all trial and error and hope that you all are made of strong, resilient stuff.
Absolutely, the most difficult part is being loving when you don't feel like it. It's almost natural to fall into self-pity when your kids and your spouse aren't listening. To retreat from our mantra, "I love you, no matter what," to lick our ego's wounds. Fear and anxiety start to encroach. Fear and anxiety that your kids are becoming ungrateful and entitled, that your spouse is not capable of meeting your needs, that you are failing at these relationships.
Frequently you are failing these relationships. I maintain a good deal of skepticism toward the idea that we are all on an ultimate positively-trending trajectory. We only know what is present before us, and we look back through that same lens. But somehow there is always another chance, another opportunity to be generous, to be kind, to give the benefit of the doubt, to bear the unpleasantness, to forgive, to learn, to do better despite how we've failed in the past.
It's not a matter of success or failure anyway. I am as capable of loving unconditionally as any other human being, which is to say, I do so in utterly flawed and inadequate ways. I like to think that I am teaching my kids to be better at love, but I know that all our human shortcomings will be passed along. It is impossible to avoid, and figuring out how to unconditionally love each other and everyone around us is the epic work to which we must all be committed. That is how we build our humanity.
More and more, the only framework I rely on to move through this world is unconditional love. It's not a facile trap into which I bleed my heart. It is a tough, radical, discomforting, heart-breaking, perhaps doomed endeavor. Maybe this is the path to transcendence, but at the very least, this is the path that I choose.
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