Love

All You Need Is Love, but Is It True?

The Beatles captured the world for music almost 50 years ago, but did they capture philosophical truth? The phrase, “all you need is love” needs, to borrow from Socrates, exploration. A hidden assumption to the song’s title is that the rest of the moral virtues are irrelevant. No need for justice if we understand the world as loving harmony and further understand injustice as an inconvenient misunderstanding. No need for forgiveness if there is no injustice.

Let us suppose that we could put a constraint on justice and forgiveness so that they do not exist. They, like injustice, are failed misunderstandings from a primitive past. All we have is love.

Now further suppose that a 14-year old girl comes to you and she has a sprained ankle, two cracked ribs, a swollen face, and a boat-load of resentment and mistrust because two boys accosted her on her way home from school. They laughed at and demeaned her.

Now what? We can bind the ankle, give her pain meds for the ribs and love her. But what do we do about the boat-load of resentment? “All you need is love.”

So, does she start to see what happened as a misunderstanding and to love the bullies, the law-breakers? Well, I suppose we could take a step back and first seek justice. We could call the police, make out a crime report, and stop the brutes so that this does not happen again.

No, wait a minute. In our world of love, there is no justice because there is no injustice.

OK. Sorry about that. Does she then start with forgiving the boys for……Sorry again. There is no forgiveness in our new world. Forgiveness is a mistake our ancestors made when they thought there was injustice in the world.

Our message to our battered friend is the refrain, “All you need is love.” We say to her: Train your mind to see mistakes where you thought there was brutality; train your mind to see your cosmic connection with boys who beat and batter and demean.

We may all be connected in some way, but we are not in harmony. Not by a loving long shot.

Aristotle famously told us over 3,500 years ago that we cannot practice any of the virtues in isolation of the others, for to do so distorts even the one moral virtue we have isolated. For example, try to help a courageous non-swimmer who has no wisdom (one of the virtues) to refrain from jumping in the stormy lake to save a dog. The courage degenerates into reckless bravado. It is no longer courage.

Try to tell the wounded 14-year-old girl that all she needs is love and you condone brutality. Even love, you see, degenerates and is no longer love. It is reduced in our case of the battered girl to patronizing her complaints, her agony to retain a point of view that cannot be defended. We know better than she does. She needs time to advance in her thinking. Condescension is not loving.

Some sing that they won’t live in a world without love. Can we start a new tune, singing that we won’t live in a world where there is only love? I hope it has a good beat and is easy to dance to, so that we can keep it on the charts for awhile, say, until the end of time.

Dr. Bob

Maintaining a Loving Heart: Part 3 of 3

“When people withdraw love from us, we might develop resentment. After all, we do not deserve unfair treatment and we do require love, not from all but at least from some. Resentment occurs when anger not only comes to visit, but sits down in our hearts, takes off its stinky shoes, and makes itself too much at-home in our hearts. After awhile, we do not know how to ask it to leave. While some anger might be good, persistent and intensive anger that is resentment is not healthy. It can distort in the short-run how we think (as we dwell on the negative), what we think (as we have specific condemning thoughts), and how we act (reducing our will to act in a morally good way).” Excerpt from The Forgiving Life, chapter 1

Maintaining a Loving Heart: Part 2

“If the theory is correct that the essence of our humanity is agape love in our minds, hearts, and actions, then we need to take seriously this caution: If love remains outside of us for a very long time, this can do damage to our emotions and to our relationships with many different people in our lives. In a sense, the connections which we formerly had with good people can become broken. We in a sense become disconnected from a variety of other people. We see this over and over in the published literature. The book, Helping Clients Forgive, presents scientific and clinical evidence of damaged emotions and relationships when love is withdrawn from people.” Excerpt from the book, The Forgiving Life, Chapter 1.

Maintaining a Loving Heart: Part 1 of 3

“As we continually live with love withdrawn from us and a resulting resentment (with the short-term consequences of thinking with a negative pattern, thinking specific condemning thoughts, and acting poorly), we can settle into a kind of long-term distortion of who the love-withdrawing person is, who we ourselves are, and who people are in general. The basic issue here is that once love is withdrawn from us, we can begin to withdraw a sense of worth toward the one who hurt us. The conclusion is that he or she is worth-less. Over time, we can drift into the dangerous conclusion, ‘I, too, am worthless.’ After all, others have withdrawn love from me and have concluded that I lack worth, therefore I do lack worth. Even later, we can drift into the unhealthy conclusion that there is no love in the world and so no one really has any worth, thus everyone is worth-less.” Excerpt from the book, The Forgiving Life, Chapter 1.

Wounds and Love

In my years of talking with people about forgiveness, I have come to realize something important about the process: Wounded people are the ones who most often wound other people. Person A wounds Person B who wounds Person C. Person C is unaware that the wounds suffered by Person A are now descending on her.

Woundedness has a way of living on from person to person, not unlike how a virus continues to live, by finding a new host. The woundedness can go on for many years across many generations.

In my years of talking with people about forgiveness, I have come to realize something important about the process: Loving people are the ones who have been loved. Person A loves Person B who….you know the pattern.

We wound because we were first wounded.

We love because we were first loved.

We forgive because we were first wounded and loved.

We need to bring more love to people so that we can combat the woundedness with forgiveness.

In my years of talking with people about forgiveness, I have come to realize something important about the process: It is easier to pass on woundedness than love; woundedness than forgiveness.

Love can die in one generation if calamity descends. This is why we must be so vigilant about love and forgiveness. They are more fragile than our wounds.

R.E.