Imagine it: You're sitting by yourself in the outdoor patio of a local brewery, reading with the appropriate beverage. Remember (try and suspend disbelief for a moment), you're one of the place's nerdier, less fashionable customers.
Now - again - imagine it, if you can: Conviviality, liveliness, laughter, from some nearby table of strangers, that spills over into yours, and yet that somehow makes you feel - not self-conscious, or awkward, but at ease. That gives you reason to feel not questioned, or inadequate, but accepted. Maybe even embraced? (Not to get too weird)
I'm not saying that that never or seldom happens. But even if there are places - clubs, restaurants, parks, etc - where it happens several times a week, or even every day: surely, that's got to be one of the great miracles of Love in any place, and in any Age? So why do I feel, maybe especially in our own Age?
But let me proceed by making a disclaimer.
Far be it from me to downplay the importance, or even the dire necessity, of charitable love in today's world. Indeed, it may well be something the world needs now more desperately than ever. But I can tell you, in very short order, the kind of "unselfish" love that the world does not need more of, because it's already got enough and to spare.It is the kind that's pretty much the direct opposite of the hospitable love I described just now, unfolding at the local brewery. It is the kind of love that seeks to improve us in such a way, and with such words, as in almost any other context - say, a US Marine boot-camp drill - might be deemed unduly callous, or harsh. Or even cruel.
Right now, though, I'm recalling a very distinct and yet, it may be, very Modern kind of improving charity. One of which I've written about elsewhere, at least in certain other of its aspects. A kind that seems to assume the beloved can only be improved by means of a certain, often very subtle, gradual, by-a-thousand-cuts kind of embarrassment. Or even humiliation. I'm thinking of the sort of love in whose company - which may in fact be my company - you find it extremely hard not to feel more and more uncomfortable, self-conscious, awkward, stupid, ridiculous, and ultimately useless. That's right, even when you're walking down the street minding your own business, and all of a sudden this Great Love of Mine drives up and very insistently offers you a ride. Yes, even when extending this kind gesture, it somehow manages to reinforce in your mind all the things about you that are either wrong, or ridiculous, or inadvertently amusing. Or else, at very least, those things that urgently require work, revision or radical change. Such that, even when this Great Love most generously takes on itself the burden of loving you "anyways", there seems hardly a corner of the earth that won't very soon learn how a difficult a task it was.
That, in my humble estimation is - more or less exactly - the kind of love the world doesn't need now. But therein lies also the difficulty: Just how I am to love you in a way that's truly unselfish, and that genuinely seeks your improvement, and yet - somehow - doesn't make you feel more and more uncomfortable, inadequate and, in the final count, useless. Even, mind you, as you're supposed to be making yourself more and more useful, all the time: if nothing else, in order to prove your worthiness and fitness to go on living in this Great Globalizing World, in which God forbid there should be anything remotely resembling dead weight. (Meanwhile, my great outpouring of love and concern seems more than ever designed to convince you of, once again, your massive inutility.)
In short, this present Age may often carry a big stick. But unlike Teddy Roosevelt it has never had less use for speaking softly. The apparent point being that, even if your message is simply that you care for someone, wherever possible make sure that you hit them between the eyes with that fact. And preferably in such a way as demonstrates your own great effort, and their own still greater unworthiness. That is the problem with hard words: like hard water, they corrode, and corrupt, everything - even the things they wash and clean.
Meanwhile - and whatever my degree of verbal abrasiveness - don't you DARE tell me I'm not (at least) trying to love you charitably, to the best of my ability.
"Well, you can call it whatever you like," you understandably retort. "BUT I DON'T CALL THAT LOVE AT ALL!"
Fair enough. But in that case, maybe someone can tell me what other "productive" energy, what other "love" it is, that's been making this Great Global World go round and round, ever faster and faster. And with hardly so much as a pause for self-reflection, Covid-wise or otherwise? Much less remorse, or repentance?
Not, mind you, that I have anything against Love That Improves. All love is sentimental and useless except as it seeks the betterment of the loved one. Any love worth its name - any love whose ultimate roots are in Love Himself - will always take us where we are. But it will never leave us there. And that holds true regardless of whether you and I, the immediate lovers - God's tools, if you will - haven't got the faintest clue as to (1) where the improvement is most needed, or (2) how one most needs to go about it.
Right now, though, I'm recalling a very distinct and yet, it may be, very Modern kind of improving charity. One of which I've written about elsewhere, at least in certain other of its aspects. A kind that seems to assume the beloved can only be improved by means of a certain, often very subtle, gradual, by-a-thousand-cuts kind of embarrassment. Or even humiliation. I'm thinking of the sort of love in whose company - which may in fact be my company - you find it extremely hard not to feel more and more uncomfortable, self-conscious, awkward, stupid, ridiculous, and ultimately useless. That's right, even when you're walking down the street minding your own business, and all of a sudden this Great Love of Mine drives up and very insistently offers you a ride. Yes, even when extending this kind gesture, it somehow manages to reinforce in your mind all the things about you that are either wrong, or ridiculous, or inadvertently amusing. Or else, at very least, those things that urgently require work, revision or radical change. Such that, even when this Great Love most generously takes on itself the burden of loving you "anyways", there seems hardly a corner of the earth that won't very soon learn how a difficult a task it was.
That, in my humble estimation is - more or less exactly - the kind of love the world doesn't need now. But therein lies also the difficulty: Just how I am to love you in a way that's truly unselfish, and that genuinely seeks your improvement, and yet - somehow - doesn't make you feel more and more uncomfortable, inadequate and, in the final count, useless. Even, mind you, as you're supposed to be making yourself more and more useful, all the time: if nothing else, in order to prove your worthiness and fitness to go on living in this Great Globalizing World, in which God forbid there should be anything remotely resembling dead weight. (Meanwhile, my great outpouring of love and concern seems more than ever designed to convince you of, once again, your massive inutility.)
Which brings me to, I think, a closely related point. For one thing, I notice this rather obsessively utilitarian Great Global World is also very fond of hardness and harshness. And that as a method, not just of solving and remediating problems, but of talking about them. Even as America places most of whatever remaining religious faith it has in violence, arrogance, abruptness and severity. And again, as those same qualities are applied, not just to action, but to speech, exhortation, encouragement. Almost as if to suggest one's language can never be UN-tender enough. Even with those you love. And maybe especially with those you love the most? Remember, Improvement Is Everything. (Perhaps more accurately known nowadays as "fixing," as I suggested some time ago in another place). And if not your own improvement, then surely - even better - somebody else's?
In short, this present Age may often carry a big stick. But unlike Teddy Roosevelt it has never had less use for speaking softly. The apparent point being that, even if your message is simply that you care for someone, wherever possible make sure that you hit them between the eyes with that fact. And preferably in such a way as demonstrates your own great effort, and their own still greater unworthiness. That is the problem with hard words: like hard water, they corrode, and corrupt, everything - even the things they wash and clean.
Meanwhile - and whatever my degree of verbal abrasiveness - don't you DARE tell me I'm not (at least) trying to love you charitably, to the best of my ability.
"Well, you can call it whatever you like," you understandably retort. "BUT I DON'T CALL THAT LOVE AT ALL!"
Fair enough. But in that case, maybe someone can tell me what other "productive" energy, what other "love" it is, that's been making this Great Global World go round and round, ever faster and faster. And with hardly so much as a pause for self-reflection, Covid-wise or otherwise? Much less remorse, or repentance?
(Edited.)
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