love

"Any time not spent on love is wasted." - Torquato Tasso

One of my favorite Easter traditions used to be Swieconka. This is where Polish people gather on Holy Saturday, the day before the day, bringing culinary abundance to be blessed by a priest so that when the vodka and kielbasa starts flowing immediately after morning mass on Sunday, it’s as though the divine has already assuaged any guilt related to the drunken gluttony that will inevitably follow. (I don’t know why only Polish people ever did this—perchance in anticipation of how much Belvedere we’d go through—preventative penance, perhaps.) As I thought of my own impromptu Easter picnic, I wondered if I could incorporate this familial tradition into festivities with friends.

I brought to mind the traditional basket: kielbasa, eggs, a lamb made of butter and one of sugar, ham, cheese, bacon… and I realized that all of these foods, although not entirely nixed from my current diet, are certainly consciously kept at bay on a more than regular basis. Calling my mother, I detailed my predicament. She recounted to me the list from above and I replied,

“Well, I’ve been eating mostly vegan lately, mom, so, you know, none of those things really work so well for me right now.”

She paused thoughtfully, then in a cheery, childlike burst of inspiration chimed in “I know! Lamb! Lamb is also really good to use.”

Pause. (My mind notes silently to itself that my go-to place is not the one of my past, snarky, retaliative sarcasm—awesome, this is growth.) Pause. “…Yeah, um, mom… that’s still not really the best if I’m aiming for VEGAN.”

Today I received this quotation from a random Kabballah newletter:

“Unconditional love is accepting someone as they are, without judgment. And it doesn't just happen. It is a mountain you must constantly climb, looking to the peak even when you've been knocked down to your knees. This is unconditional love.”

My mother and I used to be oil and water. More specifically, I might have fancied myself to be unrefined extra virgin organic expeller cold pressed olive oil and she could not fathom any issue I might have with tap water. Other than sharing an ability to hold a relentless focus toward an object of desire, and my spitting image visage of her 30 years ago (thank you mom,) I’m hard pressed to find many things we have in common. It’s no secret that to get from a rebellious, tantrum throwing, reluctantly suburban sequestered, 15 year old to a place of truly holding my mother in a light where I properly cherish and respect her, took Andes of work.

When we teach ourselves to love, does it stretch the reservoir of our capacity to receive love in greater amounts? I would argue, yes.

Today is Easter and I’m assuming we’re all familiar with the Jesus crucifixion account. After days of torture, the pinnacle of the gory event culminated in his last magnanimous breaths of “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” Now, this wasn’t an evolution of love. This was not a breakthrough climax due to years of cognitive therapy. I would venture to say Jesus was not carrying the cross, whispering silent affirmations regarding himself or those around him. The idea is that Jesus was born to this world encompassing such a pure embodiment of love that he was instantly recognized as sent from elsewhere. He was so tapped into the light, everyone collectively thought, “Dude, it’s obvi this guy is NOT human.” If one chooses to believe that Jesus healed the sick from any number of maladies ranging from blindness to leprosy, the magic is not that HE was able to produce a miracle, it’s that he was able to see the perfection in someone so completely when others couldn’t, that he/she would be connected to that love and thereby be spontaneously healed.

"A Course in Miracles" is a useful text for those interested in metaphysical teachings via a Jesus slant. Using Christic terminology, it speaks to how there are only two forces in this world: fear and love. It postulates that love is the innate state and our natural inheritance, and our work is only about removing the blocks from that love. Jesus had it in spades, but we, as mere mortals, can get there. Every religious or spiritual following basically holds the same truth, but it is said quite succinctly in ACIM.

I think we have been collectively under the veil of the idea that love is something that we are graced with or not. Particularly in contemporary America, where disposable and flashy are coveted material adjectives, the idea that one must tend to love, as though a garden, and root through its weeds, seems unromantic. Unglamorous. Not hot enough for primetime. The commercialization of love via shows such as “The Bachelor” coats relationship in a polyurethane gleam of what something is “supposed” to look like. Props include single long-stemmed red roses, evening gowns, faux waterfalls and emotional waterworks; really it’s just an updated Miss America pageant and instead of a tiara, the winner gets a diamond ring.

“The Bachelor” happens to be one of my mother’s favorite shows, so when visiting her, I have, out of love for her, sat and watched it. And then, like the malleable sheep that I am, have been subsequently sucked into the drama. No mater how set-dressed, Disney-fied or over-produced the show can be, these people do open their hearts and genuine emotion seems to surface. However, even if authentic love could bloom in these plastic surroundings, it’s usually only weeks later the public evaporation is so splashed across the tabloids, I find myself inadvertently learning these people’s names that I know nothing about.

What I have found in my personal experience is that love has nothing to do with anyone around me and everything to do with myself. As I’ve evolved (let’s hope) and that development continues to unroll, the simplest way to put it is, when I am less concerned with myself there is more love for others. What I find intriguing is we are not born with fixed levels of selflessness. Our capacity to love can be nurtured and its muscle developed.

We’ve all experienced the glow of the beginning of a relationship where we’ll bend over backwards for our partner, happily wanting to take care of him/her, perhaps even self-sacrificing to tend to his/her needs. And many times, that fades. The gestures, the romance, the willingness to compromise easily. When I look around at the people whom I feel have the best relationships, I notice that this willingness is still present. And it doesn’t only have to do with romantic relationships—one would never try to grow a business, and then sit back one day and say “Cool, that’s launched, now I’m done. What are you going to do for ME, baby?” No, there are hurdles and milestones and things get easier or smoother, or settle in to more of a pattern, but it is still a daily effort.

"But love, I've come to understand, is more than three words mumbled before bed time. Love is sustained by action, a pattern of devotion in the things we do for each other every day." -Nicholas Sparks

The act of DECIDING to love changes us to be more open to love. If I were at my mother’s for Easter, she might say, “Margaret can you drive to the grocery?..., I forgot herring in oil. You’ll need to go to the special Polish deli a half hour away.”

Based on where I am in my life, as well as any particular day, the reactions range. “Absolutely, I’ll go right now!” throwing some house music on the BMW cd player and jamming it out into town, would be a "good" day.

Ten years ago, there would have been whining, screaming, a “Why do I have to do it—What about my sister—I have to do everything!” attitude, stomping, sulking and a bitter ride into the city.

Clearly one of these routes is more pleasant than the other.

There are certainly moments where still Mom could catch me in a crabby mood, and although I might go, it would be begrudgingly. Hardly Jesus material, but I like to think of this as a deposit into the love bank. When we do something that we know to be the right or kind or selfless thing to do, against the will of our pouty ego, it’s a choice recognizing there might be a higher love present, outside of the confines of what our own perceptions might intimate. Kabbalah speaks to this as resistance, and with rising above our reactive behaviors, it says we transform ourselves to allow more light into our lives. Even simpler bumper sticker wisdom: What Would Jesus Do?

This can be practiced in reaction to disgruntled deliverymen, picking our battles in relation to ESPN hours logged on a shared TV, or not throwing tantrums at your mother because of elevated holiday stress levels. (ACIM also says, would you rather be happy, or would you rather be right? I used to want to be right. Happy is more fun these days.) Love IS a mountain we must constantly climb, in the small, daily decisions of what kind of person we choose to be. The beauty is, it gets easier with each step, and the view from the top?... well, it’s pretty f’ing spectacular.