I’ve been surveying my music collection for wisdom about love. When I was a teenager, I learned the most from reading poetry, but rock music has been the poetry of my generation. The poets have it all over the rockers. My favorite at 16 after I got over Keats and Yeats was Khayyam. This Persian lover was focused on the moment, living for now, and enjoying the hell out of it. His culture was about loving. Like I said a few weeks back, love is a verb. As Eric Fromme pointed out, in our modern cultural experience, we focus too little on being and too much on having. Part of this is our brain wiring–Andrew Newburg found that infatuated people show similar activation of brain regions as is found in addiction and mental illness!
When singers are not whining about lost love, they are begging for new love. They are all about the having of love.
But we don’t have or possess love, and as soon as that’s the goal, things go terribly wrong.
When things are right, an important one emerges in our life, loves us actively, surprises us, delights us, and that may last a long time or a short one. When it’s part of our experience, those who thrive on connectedness feel content. (I’m definitely in that camp). When it’s not in our active experience, in that we aren’t loving someone or others aren’t loving us, we feel loss, sadness, disappointment, and sometimes do foolish things to acquire love again. I’ve been in that camp too.
But the essence of love is not the getting, or the having or the losing. It’s the action of giving, or the experience or receiving, love given unconditionally.
On my long walk today I heard this song and while some of her lyrics are awkward, they capture this idea pretty well.
I’ll give you countless amounts of outright acceptance if you want it
I will give you encouragement to choose the path that you want if you need it
You can speak of anger and doubts your fears and freak outs and I’ll hold it
You can share your so-called shame filled accounts of times in your life and I won’t judge it
(and there are no strings attached to it)
You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give
You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have
I give you thanks for receiving it’s my privilege
And you owe me nothing in return
You can ask for space for yourself and only yourself and I’ll grant it
You can ask for freedom as well or time to travel and you’ll have it
You can ask to live by yourself or love someone else and I’ll support it
You can ask for anything you want anything at all and I’ll understand it
(and there are no strings attached to it)
You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give
You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have
I give you thanks for receiving it’s my privilege
And you owe me nothing in return
I bet you’re wondering when the next payback shoe will eventually drop
I bet you’re wondering when my conditional police will force you to cough up
I bet wonder how far you have now danced you way back into debt
This is the only kind of love as I understand it that there really is
You can express your deepest of truths even if it means I’ll lose you and I’ll hear it
You can fall into the abyss on your way to your bliss I’ll empathize with
You can say that you have to skip town to chase your passion I’ll hear it
You can even hit rock bottom have a mid-life crisis and I’ll hold it
(and there are no strings attached)
You owe me nothing for giving the love that I give
You owe me nothing for caring the way that I have
I give you thanks for receiving it’s my privilege
And you owe me nothing in return
by Alanis Morisette
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