Love

Love

I want to talk about something today that I don’t yet fully understand, something I haven’t fully developed an opinion on, something I haven’t sorted out. It’s about love. It could be God’s love, romantic love, the love of a parent for a child or a more nebulous spread out feeling of love for everyone.

Some people call this kind of love grace. Freely given, charismatic, super abundant given and received happiness. Caring, giving, admiring and gratitude are all feelings that come from it. Those that have this feeling and live for it, usually, but not always are religious or God centered people, they often carry with them the idea that life is good, that life itself is good.

Its adherents believe that being an offering person is good, irrespective of whether what is offered is always earned or deserved. Many of us experience this only when we are dealing with our children. We love them, we always love them, even when we’re not liking them we love them. But most of us –yet not all- only experience this with our children and not with many others.

Some who get so much have no gratitude for what has been given to them thinking that it is simply deserved; that they are entitled to it, either because they believe that they are the center of attention or because they are so important or more important than others.

[Let me write the above paragraph again. This time let’s not say it is they who live without love, grace and gratitude. Let’s say this about ourselves. Here’s how it sounds admonishing ourselves instead of others.]

Many of us who get so much have no gratitude for what’s been given to us, thinking that we deserve it, that we are entitled to it, either because we believe that we are the center of attention or because we think we are more important than others.

Sounds so true when you’re admonishing someone else, somehow doesn’t feel quite as relevant when we’re asked to reflect upon our own actions does it?

Most of the time, most of us compete for resources. We want to get ours, want to end up on top. Most of us do not believe life itself is good; it’s only good if we make it good. This mentality is realistic and helps us build strength, affluence and security. It’s reality as we see it- as we experience it, but we cannot fall into thinking that life is somehow just a competition with others- without the care of love many people get from God, most people get from family and a few unfortunate folks don’t get at all.

Pride and status is too often competed for to show someone else or ourselves that we have more than others, that we are better than another and to show ourselves we are valuable. We all do it. We should just recognize that we are doing it and try to make sure we also live with love in our hearts. Selfless love is a vital ingredient in a well-lived life.

This is Randy Feldman on WCRN’s Midday report.