29. COMMITMENT CHALLENGE
Belinda Luscombe, TIME editor-at-large, shared this about love. “I Love You is the title of at least 47 songs, 15 albums and 13 movies in the English-language canon. We say and hear it all the time — even if it isn’t directed at anyone in particular. … Yet when it comes to actually speaking the words out loud, to another person, whose face we can actually see, people can get squeamish.”
“Psychologists have observed that modern relationships do not follow the map that used to help people guide their way to commitment. People used to meet, go out on a few dates, decide not to date anyone else, learn to trust each other, fall in love, say Those Three Words and then either officially partner up and maybe marry, or break up and fall into a deep funk before starting the process all over again. The relationships were more or less linear.”
“Now, ambiguity is the thing. As a result, people aren’t sure what their relationships are, let alone whether they will last. Maybe you hang out with someone, and perhaps you hook up with them a couple of times, but you don’t want to put a name on it — and there are reasons for this. ‘I think the ambiguity is motivated,’ says Scott Stanley, a research professor in Psychology at the University of Denver. ‘Simply put, if I don’t make it really clear what I want, I cannot be rejected as deeply. Ambiguity feels protective.’”
“Once someone has said I love you, they can’t unsay it. They’ve made a declaration as to what camp they’re in, whether their love interest feels the same way or not. For some folks, it feels like diving off the high board, naked, in front of the entire school (or office). Maybe it leads to glory, maybe you belly-flop.”
“Saying I love you to someone is throwing such caution to the winds. It’s committing to something that might not work out in the long run.”
“It also helps to realize that humans have a need to love, therapists say, and to avoid meeting that need is to eliminate a key part of your humanity. Homo sapiens are herd animals who pair bond. So, while it’s risky and dangerous to trust someone with such information, it’s also one of the most exhilarating parts of belonging to the species.”
Mitch Albom visited Morrie Schwartz, his former Brandeis professor, on Tuesdays during the last months of Morrie’s losing battle with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Albom reports that on one of those visits, Morrie said, “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love and to let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love. We think, if we let it in, we’ll become too soft.”
Russell Wilson, Seattle Seahawks quarterback, shared the speakers’ table with Henry Gates, Jr., host of the PBS show Finding Your Roots, at which Gates revealed his research on Wilson. Wilson’s paternal great-great-great-great grandmother was a slave, born to a white mother that gave her a legal claim to freedom. She married a slave. After 23 years, a judge ruled that she and her children were free. She had saved money to purchase the freedom of her husband.
“What it all goes back to is really loving people,” Wilson said. “Sometimes you have to forget what a person looks like, forget what a person believes in, forget what a person does have or does not have… You have to look deep inside and love.”
Oscar winner Halle Berry tells of what happened when her mother moved her from an inner-city school to a suburban school where she was one of maybe five black children at the school. In that environment she struggled with her identity. “Was I good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, talented in any way?” A black teacher at the school came to the rescue when Halle felt herself “going in a direction that could have been really bad. … She took me in and loved me, and through her I knew that I was okay and smart and talented.”
But unconditional love? Those of us who have dogs tend to attribute that kind of love to our canine partners. My dogs loved me in the ups and downs of my moods, when I was weary and when energetic, when my walks were up to standard and when they fell short, and even when my feeding routine broke the pattern that they relied upon. Whenever I left, they welcomed me back with forgiveness for my absence and with exuberance for my return.
New York Times columnist David Brooks observes that many of us as parents express a more conditional kind of love. We bathe our children in what Brooks calls directional love. We applaud with smiles and reward achievement, be it discipline, grades, athletic wins, getting in the right schools, associating with the right people — all the things that we parents think will make our kids successful — in other words, merit love.
This kind of love can create a sense that love must be earned with short-term benefits but might fall short of the kind of long-term unconditional love that helps us to be ourselves and to stretch to our potential, even when that does not mesh with the expectations of others.
Q: Whom do you love unconditionally?
