Why I Believe in Love

I believe in love.

To our postmodern ears, the above statement likely sounds foolishly romantic, naive, trite, corny, and not remotely ironic and cynical enough (i.e. intellectual enough) to be worthy of our consideration.

We likely could amuse ourselves for hours, conjuring up, quite easily, words and phrases to marginalize a statement like "I believe in love" and, by doing so, make ourselves feel smart and clever because we are far too wise to fall for such foolish ideas.

Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we know we would depart from such colloquy wondering why we cannot believe in such ideas and why we are so afraid to believe in them, knowing that, deep inside, we do, in fact, long to believe in love. And this awareness would likely bestow upon us feelings sadness, emptiness, resentfulness, and a longing for something to fill our seemingly endless void.

However, my above predictions are probably irrelevant with regard to this brief essay, as the kind of love typically ridiculed by the cynical is not the kind of love of which I speak. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated in his "Beyond Vietnam" speech,

When I speak of love, I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I'm not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life.

While I am a secular person and not a believer in the "metaphysical," I, like Dr. King, mean neither sentimentality nor "emotional bosh."

So what is it that I do mean by love? When I speak of love, I am speaking of a force, a force that manifests itself in acts of compassion for which there is no apparent justification or reward (i.e. people acting out of compassion for one another without any thought of being rewarded for such action). I believe it is the manifestation this force of love that liberates us from the tit for tat economy of typical human interaction and shows us a superior way of being, a way of being that is not a utopian "pipe dream," but very real because it is exists and operates within us already.

I believe many of us have experienced the force of this type of love within our lives at some point in time, this powerful force of giving to others while expecting nothing in return. And though this shared experience is valuable, my primary interest is in how we can expand the influence of this force in our lives and extend its influence to touch all areas of our lives and, by doing so, transform our society.

I believe the answer to this "how" lies within us, most notably in how we view the force of love and in how we view other people.

Too often, we view love as force in which we are passive. Something happens to us "magically" or "supernaturally" without us taking action or against our will; something invades us from the outside and transforms us. Frequently, we also view love as something we "fall into," as if love is some sort of "accident." And too often we view love as something reserved for "special" people in our lives who are "worthy" for some reason or another of this special consideration or treatment known as "love."

However, the kind of love in which I believe is neither a force in which we are passive nor an accident nor reserved for a special class of people. The love in which I believe is a powerful force that we nurture, that we develop, that we exercise with intention, the intention being to transform ourselves, the lives of other people, and, consequently, our society as a whole.

The love in which I believe does not appear mysteriously out of nowhere, like some sort of unpetitioned, divine inspiration. The love in which I believe is like art in the sense that it originates with the creative force within us and evolves, as we do, over time as we transform ourselves into becoming more compassionate and enlightened people.

I believe we will never achieve a state of "perfect" compassion for other people, and such a state is not a state of love anyway. If we believe otherwise, we are setting ourselves up for failure. Love is also not a state of perfect "peace" though we can certainly understand why this view of love has it's allure. After all, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could somehow achieve a perfect state of "enlightenment" that enabled us to be effortlessly kind and compassionate to others? But such is not the case. Love is not easy. Love requires effort, hard work, strain, and toil. Love requires a lifelong inner conflict between our old selves and ideas and the newer, better, more compassionate and enlightened ideas of the person we are constantly trying to become. Love is a constant struggle in which we will fail many times. We simply have to come to terms with these failures and keep trying. This effort is love.

The love in which I believe is a difficult struggle, but this struggle is made easier when we transform the way in which we view other people. How can we transform the way in which we view other people? I believe this transformation can be accomplished if we learn to appreciate the uniqueness of the individual.

Yes, this idea may sound corny. But when I speak of "appreciating the uniqueness" of the individual, I am not speaking of some insincere, trite sweet talk that "everyone is special." By "appreciating the uniqueness" of the individual, I mean that we understand that, within all of us, there is something rare and valuable. That within all of us, there is something that has never existed before and will never exist again, and, as a result, there is something in all of us that is unique to all time. If we need to be compelled to love other people, then this uniqueness should motivate us to find every person "worth" loving. Loving things that are unique and special is natural for most of us; we simply need to understand that all people are unique and special.

But, at the same time, we also need to be "realistic." Loving other people is not completely "unselfish." We need to understand that when we love other people we also help ourselves because, when we love someone, we develop a special connection with that person that gives us more insight into that person's uniqueness. From this insight, we are able to learn not only about that person but also about ourselves. For example, we can explore such questions are how are we different from this person? What positive characteristics does this person exhibit that I do not, and how can I develop these positive characteristics in my own life? The answers to such questions can help us discover each others' uniquenesses as well as ways of developing their expression.

Perhaps, the most important aspect of loving other people, though, is that loving other people is the key to transforming our society. Individually, loving other people will bring us personal happiness, regardless of the effort and pain often involved, because we will feel better about ourselves for making the effort to love other people, and we will feel better for projecting the positive force of love, instead of negativity. Of course, socially, loving other people will bring happiness to others, as they will feel appreciated, cared for, and valued for just being who they are. Also, and perhaps more importantly, loving other people will motivate us to act in more positive and constructive ways when dealing with others, and this behavior will bring more happiness both to ourselves and to others and encourage others to engage in similar, more constructive behaviors.

I believe this constructive behavior brought on by love is the most important key to transforming and saving our society from the selfishness and violence that all too often characterize it an plague it. Though it may sound dramatic to some, I believe that, if we wish to continue to our existence, we have no choice but to transform our society through love and, as a prerequisite, to love one another. Furthermore, after much contemplation and exploration, I do not see any other way for us to curb destructive human behavior than through love. After all, other efforts have not been effective. So why should we not explore the more difficult but obvious option? If for no other reason than for this reason, I believe in love.