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O'Malley's Best 'Where Is Love?' No word is so misused, tossed around, trivialized as "love." In the first place, we use "love" for reactions that aren't love at all. In the second place, I strongly suspect (judging from the way they use the word) most people don't even know what the hell "love" really means. And in the third place, even real love--the genuine article--is a spectrum, not an either/or. The first step toward wisdom is to call a thing by its right name. A skunk isn't a "pretty striped kitty"; it's armed and mildly dangerous. Cocaine isn't "nose candy"; it's a poison that's gonna rot a hole through the middle of that nose. Blasting a Vietnamese village to dust wasn't "liberating it"; it was blasting a village to dust. "Compassionate conservativism" isn't prudent care for the helpless but quite often tight-fisted self-preservation. "I love your dress." No, your dress is pretty. "I love anchovy pizza." No, anchovy pizza gives a zip to my taste buds. "I'd love to pop that guy in the schnozz." No, I hate that guy. The first step toward wisdom is to call a thing by its right name. "I love you so much I want you exclusively mine; I don't want your life enriched by profound relationships with anyone else of my sex." Don't call that love; call it by its right name: "enslavement, impoverishment, blackmail." "Baby, if you really love me, you'd let me make love to you." No, call it by its right name. If you really love me, you don't ask me to prove it. And if this is just two healthy animals releasing sexual tension, don't call it "making love." There's a much shorter, more brutish word that captures the real truth. At least the Rolling Stones never said, "I love you"; they said "I want it." Second, most of us would be hard put to say what love really means. We think love is a feeling. No, no. Lust is a feeling; being-in-love is a feeling. But love--real love--is an act of the will. It says, "I want you happy, even at my expense." Parents know what that means. When they ground you, they're saying, "Look. I'll put up with your hating me right now if it keeps you from getting hurt down the line." That looks like the genuine article to me. One of the best examples of love I know I got from a 17-year-old boy. His girlfriend had found someone else, and he told her, "If you honestly think he can make you happier than I can, that's what I want." That looks like the genuine article to me. Third, even genuine love is a spectrum, not an either/or. There are the billions of anonymous people out there I truly love--not with the same intensity as for my best friends, but it's truly love. If I had 50 bucks, I'd rather send it to Covenant House to take care of teen prostitutes than take myself to dinner--or save whales. Then there are acquaintances; I genuinely love them, even if, at times, I don't find them even likable--because love isn't just a feeling; it's an act of the will. I give them the tribute of my courtesy, even when--especially when--they don't deserve it. That's why it drives me nuts to hear explosions of laughter outside the dorms at 3:00 a.m--because it's so self-centered, so unloving. Then there are friends, not pals, but people you'd feel comfortable sitting with in the cafeteria. None of your conversations deserves to be recorded and graven in bronze, but there's genuine affection in them. Beneath the chit-chat, there's a deeper conversation going on that says, "I enjoy being with you." And that's a gift of self, that's an act of love, surely. Then there are pals, your gang, the people you just assume you're going to the cafeteria with. They're the people--sadly--you take for granted, people you truly, genuinely love--if "love" has any meaning at all. I say "sadly" because it'd be such a wonderful gift to hear it said, just once: "Ahem, I, uh, love you." We all want to hear it. Sad that our shy self-protectiveness never allows us to say it. Even to our own parents, who've loved us since before we had faces-and long, long before they ever saw our faces. Finally, best friends, people you'd stand up and be counted for, bail out, weep with. More precious than anything we envy Donald Trump or Martha Stewart for. Too bad that, in the hurly-burly, we forget that. Too bad we haven't time to pause and reflect on those names, those faces, the people we love--to understand how gift-ed we are. In "Fiddler on the Roof," Golde does better than define love: "For twenty-five years I've lived with him, fought with him, starved with him. Twenty-five years my bed is his. If that's not love, what is?" So, what have I been gibbering about? First, at one extreme, I think we ought to be more cautious using the word "love," so we don't debase it. Second, at the other extreme, that we not be afraid to use the word when it's really the truth, either because we stupidly confuse "love" with "lust" or because we think we have to like the people we use it about. And third, that we realize it's the truth when we use it about people we genuinely care about but feel no palpitations for-like the anonymous victims of Katrina and like the God without whom we'd not exist. Of course you do love. But you don't think of it as love. You think of it as "being there for them" or "I don't know what the hell I would've done without...." or "Are you sure you're okay?" But we refrain from calling it love--almost as if the word "love"-- that we use for dresses and pizza--would debase something so beautiful. Oddly, we learn to love God by loving one another. First, we've got to notice God, focus him out of the smear of anonymous faces, make him an acquaintance. Then take him for a long walk, just the two of you, and give him the time and talk it takes to become a friend, a pal, a persnickety, unpredictable, high-handed, desolatingly loyal friend. He's ready. When you are.
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Copyright © 2008, McQuaid Jesuit |
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