Being Love – 6 – The Myth of Unconditional Love

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This morning we finalize our discussion about cultivating the quality of love in our life.  And it seems like perfect timing since I would like to dedicate this Dharma talk to my dear mom who passed away last week.  It’s been an profound process interacting with all my mom friends from an entire lifetime—from her sisters who she grew up with, to her friends from the suburb where I grew up, to her friends from the small town in East Texas where she and my dad retired, and lastly her friends she made just this last year in the memory care facility where she lived.  I had a lot of time this last week to reflect on this concept of how to infuse more love into our lives.  My mom was an expert at that.

Many of you met her last year when she lived with me for a few months. She loved this place so much!  There was several things I found irritating about my mom.  One habit she had was that she loved to meet new people and talk with them, often about what her three daughters were doing—which I found excruciating.  Complete strangers would compliment me on my achievements that my mother had shared with them.  She was always too slow to leave a party or church or a dance or any get together where she could interact with people.  As a child, I remember this trait of hers with great frustration--I wanted to go home, and she was never ready.  Another trait that bugged me was that she wanted to take my picture all the time, and I remember one skating party when I was eleven, I refused to pose for her—it seemed way too embarrassing—I just wanted to skate,  So, she took pictures of some other kid who she made friends with.  I still have the pictures of this strange girl who was more than happy to pose and make my mom happy.

My mom and dad had a great love affair and treated each other with such great respect, with roles clearly defined, they made marriage look easy.  That is the excuse I’m giving for why I was really bad at marriage. I didn’t realize that behind the scenes, they worked hard to get through the bad times together, and with three daughters, trust me, there were a lot of bad times.

In Buddhism, we often distinguish between the personal love between two people, and the loving-kindness that we can cultivate, but I am finding that these two kinds of love are more intertwined than we might think.  We talk about personal love as a love with expectations.  We talk about loving-kindness as love without expecting anything in return.  But as I reflect on the love that my mother shared with my father, with me and my sisters, with her family and friends, it seems that there is a mixture of these two loves that at the heart of how to create more love in one's life.

It seems that perhaps there is a myth of unconditional love.  This concept that if we were REALLY good people, we could love without any expectations at all, isn’t that what loving-kindness is supposed to be about?  But now, upon reflection, that kind of love seems too detached for me.  It seems that it might be easier to love someone unconditionally because we might use it as an excuse to keep them at arm's length, to not have those tough conversations when someone is being harmful to themselves or to others.

When I look at the love I was given by my parents, and the love that I try to cultivate in these practices, Perhaps expectation is not quite the right word.  it seems that there is a bit more "engagement".  If I truly want to extend love to someone, I cannot stand by if they are destroying their lives through addiction and destructive behavior.  Unconditional love is NOT about doing nothing.  It is sometimes about doing something while still recognizing and respecting the free will of others. 

One of my sisters is a lifelong smoker, and my mother was a nurse and health fanatic.  My mother loved my sister unconditionally, but never hesitated to share with her that she feared that she would bury her daughter before she herself would die because of this addiction. When my mom felt strongly about something, she could be relentless. She loved my sister in spite of her smoking and because of that love, did whatever she thought might help her stop.  My sister did not find this constant advice and encouragement (some might say badgering...) endearing at all.

I think we can all agree that smoking isn’t a healthy habit, but where does one person’s opinion about what is right become conditional?  Some criticisms we share with each other may not be so black and white.   Sometimes, we try to use our love as a bargaining chip for changing them.  "I will only love you if you are the way I want you to be."  Creating some wriggle room in the definition and expression of unconditional love might lead to some messiness.  Yet, isn't life messy?  Isn't love, any kind of love, often messy?  Finding the balance between conditional and unconditional love is not easy.  And yet, I would offer that somewhere in the middle of it all is the very sweet spot of life. 

Jim Parker sent me a great TED Talk by Brene Brown about how important it is be vulnerable in order to create more love in our lives.  We must risk being rejected in order to put ourselves out there, with a love that may not be returned.   For many of us, vulnerability is far too scary, so we choose to numb out with addiction or run away with distractions, anything to not have to feel the awful feeling of hurt, fear, rejection. Brene Brown calls vulnerability the magic potion for having love in our life.  When we allow ourselves to feel vulnerable, there is an unspoken arising of worthiness—it’s okay to be imperfect and still love, be loved and belong. Brene gives us the three C’s for increasing the love in our life:

·         Courage = to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart, the courage to be imperfect, and the courage to work on those parts of you that may be hurting yourself or hurting others.

·         Compassion = to begin with ourselves to then be able to have compassion for others, because none of us needs to be perfect to deserve love.

·         Connection= to explore making connections with others who are imperfect as well; it is connection with others that leads us to the greatest joy, gratitude and happiness in life.

What I found in my parents was a willingness to love others without expectations of love in return, AND they were both willing to express concern and offer suggestions when they felt someone were being hurtful to themselves or to others.  For me, that is what unconditional love is all about. 

As one by one, friends and family of my mom came to offer me their condolences, their stories were consistent.  My mom always had time for them, she always made them feel special and cared for, she never missed an opportunity to volunteer to help others, to give something away with love (many of you have her crosses that she crocheted with love.  Her last project was trying to learn to crochet a heart when she learned that maybe a cross wasn’t the best gift to give a Buddhist…)

I had a co-worker who had a sign in his office that has always stuck with me.  He had a wife and three children, and in the hectic stress-filled life of corporate work, I know it was often difficult to have work-life balance.  But he kept a sign in his office, that said “children spell love T.I.M.E.”  That is what I learned from my mom about cultivating unconditional love.  It is not about one heroic act or a grand gesture—it was about always having time to just be with me, to be with others, to be interested in their lives, to listen carefully to their hopes and dreams.  

I recommend that we shatter this old myth of unconditional love—it does not mean that we don’t care about what others are doing, but rather we care so much that we are willing to love them as they are and help them any way we can. We do NOT have to be a doormat, but be a loving supporter, a spiritual cheerleader, a caring coach, an accepting partner, and knowing when to give someone a second or third or fourth chance.

My mom and dad were not perfect, but they were experts at unconditional love.   They were comfortable with being vulnerable and examining what they themselves could do better, and they accepted themselves and others in all their imperfections.  I am grateful for this amazing gift.