As I keep stacking more words onto my blog pages, I notice that I use words that may have different meanings to different people. Such as “love” and “compassion.” Love for oneself, love for the world, compassion for those next to you.
Admittedly, these terms are in vogue now. So much so, that some “talking heads” elevated them to a “fad” status. You can’t walk by a newsstand or scroll down a portal page without tripping on a “love” of one kind or another, or a “compassion” for these or those. But, I haven’t seen a single footnote with a definition of either.
What I’d like to do here is attempt to define these terms for the purposes of what I write. Just so we have “common terms of discussion.” Or, “speak the same language” or “are on the same page.” Whatever cliché pleases you the most.
If you’re looking for the world’s authority on love and compassion, I urge you to navigate to a different web page, for the simple reason that I am not. This caveat taken care of, read with caution.
I remember my first girlfriend, at a fragile age of fourteen. I was in love, then I loved her, then I loved her quietly after the Atlantic separated us a year later. The feeling went from a burning excitement of her proximity, to a level blue flame of a maturing relationship to yellowish embers that could have only been seen in the dark of a night’s dream. I used the word “love” to describe all of those feelings. Was it, really?
Fast-forward to 1982 and the book by M. Scott Peck. I read “The Road Less Travelled” two years before it made it to the best-seller list. Even though at first Peck said that love was too great and too deep a concept to grapple with, he relented a bit further down the same page and offered a definition. I remember reading there that love is a genuine caring or concern for another’s personal growth. It is where you extend yourself in order to help another person grow. If I apply this definition to my first girlfriend, I didn’t love her at all. I did not extend myself in any conscious way to help her grow as a person. What was it that I felt for her?
A friend of mine was visiting recently and asked me what I thought it meant to love yourself. Whoa! This is getting complicated. How do you extend yourself to help yourself grow? I didn’t know what to say…
Perhaps, Dr. Peck’s definition isn't going to work for me all that well. Undaunted, I kept searching and searching. Webster’s, Oxford Dictionary of the English Language, Pablo Neruda, Dalai Lama, Rinpoche Trungpa, Thich Nhat Hanh and, even, the Bible. Pointless. Everyone has his own take on love. No one seems to want to converge on a single definition. Instead, they keep making the concept more and more grand, deeper and deeper, unwinding the ball of yarn out into the great spiral of the Universe. What to do?
I like to make things simple. Mainly, because I feel that it's easier to build a castle with a thousand simple blocks than to carve it out of one block of granite. So, how do I make love simple? I can’t. It's just too big to simplify. All I can do is explain what I feel.
When I say “love” in this blog, I mean a certain, identifiable feeling inside that makes us care. And, care deeply. Regardless of the fact that we may be intellectually aware of how unimportant the object of our caring is in Universal or, even, global terms. “Love” here is some form of regard for ourselves and others that allows us to do the best we can without holding back. Even if the castle that we build will blow away with the morning breeze.
Whatever you do, don’t let me stop you from choosing and using your own definition of love. If you come up short, don’t worry. No one REALLY knows what love is, anyway. Go with what you feel rather than what you think.
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