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 Mason's
Meditations
If
you're looking for something to chew over, some thoughtful seeds
for mental cultivation, bookmark this page for Jeff Mason's monthly
meditations. To think in or take away...
Number
Thirty Nine: The Two Forms of Love
Love
has two forms. One is accepting, and the other a striving sort of
love. The first is more unconditional, while the second has its
conditions and demands. The first face of love shows us a steady
attachment and a wish for the benefit and happiness of the other,
not for the sake of the lover, but for the sake of the beloved.
The lover wishes that the beloved’s desires are fulfilled,
and counts the beloved’s desiring them as a prima facie reason
to wish those things for that person. If I love you in this way,
then your desire to go to Tibet, learn Sanscrit, volunteer time
at a soup kitchen, or what have you, is also a reason for me to
wish for these things for you, too, whether I should want to do
any of them or not. It is not being jealous of the other, or the
other’s friends, interests or passions, even if they take the
person we love away from us, temporarily or permanently, the way
parents love their children who leave and go out into the world.
Maternal,
paternal or familial love gives us our first examples of unconditional
love. It is unconditional because there is nothing the beloved has
to do obtain it or keep it. It is enough that the person exists
and is loved for him or herself. The love of parents for their children
is present from the beginning, because the other is part of you
or your family. Even the mothers of mass murderer sons may continue
to love them, without condoning what they did. This is possible
for a truly unconditional love.
Our
second set of examples come from deep friendships. One of the wonderful
things about having true friends is that they no longer judge you
on appearances. They knew you when your faults were exposed, and
they did not abandon you. You are loved for yourself and not what
you can do for them. You can say what you like, behave as you like,
in the knowledge that if you start to go wrong, your friends will
give you the criticism that, perhaps, no one else will.
The
ideal of unconditional love describes a mutual and positively sustaining
relationship. It is good to think of the wishes of the beloved as
one’s own, and not to make too many demands, or lay down too
many rules, as conditions that must be met for continued affection
to be assured. However, it may be easier with friends than with
lovers to move toward unconditional love, since so much of one’s
ego, self-esteem, emotional and physical needs are bound up in a
romantic and sexual love relationship. It is perhaps too much to
ask that a romantic relationship should terminate in a purely unconditional
love.
Conditional
or demanding love is intense and changeable and seems to involve
an aura of exclusivity. The striving love makes demands on the other
to be an acceptable partner in love, and to become one with the
beloved in ever more inclusive ways. There are dangers here. The
self is vulnerable to the other, needs and wants the other, to the
point of possessiveness and jealously. This sort of love dies more
easily than unconditional love. For example, it is very hard to
grant a beloved perfect sexual freedom and continue to have the
same intense relationship. Infidelity hurts romantic relationships,
because the partners had agreed to limit their sexual freedom to
each other. A relationship may survive such shocks, but infidelity
shows a basic disrespect for the relationship and weakens the bonds
of the two. Once broken, the bonds of love are hard to repair.
.
Mason's
Meditations will next be updated mid-January 2004
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Previous
Meditations
38.
37.
36.
35.
34.
33.
32.
31.
30.
29.
28.
27.
26.
25.
24.
23.
22.
21.
20.
19.
18.
17.
16.
15.
14.
13.
12.
11.
10.
9.
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