I wish to discuss two words: Trust and Love. Both seem appropriate in light of recent unfortunate events. Here are two questions for you to consider. Is trust given or earned? And second, is love given or earned? And since I have two questions, I must confess a third. What is the connection between Trust and Love?
Once we have answered the first question, we can say that it serves as the pinion of love, the foundation, the rock on which love is built. And there is no doubt, that is what the world needs right now.
So what does it mean to trust? Love? The matter dates back to the beginning of time. In Christianity, the first Adam trusted Eve. He had no reason not to trust her. Sampson had no reason not to trust Delilah. Caesar, though he was warned to beware of the Ides of March, had no reason to distrust Brutus. Each found his trust betrayed. What happens when trust is betrayed? Love files out the window.
To love, one must trust that the other will promote their well-being and happiness. It violates trust and love is lost, perhaps never to return. If you do, you may not be on the same secure footing as before. How do you get it back? Earn it? Yes! You have to make periodic installments just as you would in your bank account. And then maybe when the account has been active for a while, the trust returns. If he does, it will be in the name of love. It is trust that breeds harmony and peace; it is trust that generates that love that every human being seeks.
Dr. Robert Frey reminds us that we must do everything we can to create a reality based on love. In doing so, we must realize that it is a ‘moment-to-moment matter’. So how do you love? First, let’s see if we can come up with a working definition. I love chocolate, Sailors, mystery novels. I love my pet. Love love love. And not an ounce of understanding. The word love has been used so much that it has become almost empty. So how do we take something that has almost lost its meaning and put it back? This question is not really that different from the question about trust.
Trust is given. Love is given.. Is trust given with conditions? Only if he has been raped. Is it necessary to read the fine print to know if you are trustworthy? Aren’t that prenuptial agreements or pre-assigned responsibilities within a relationship, fine print conditions?
The musical muses tell us that ‘love is a thing of many splendours’. We are told ‘love is what makes the world go round’, and we are told that ‘love is the greatest thing’. However, don’t we all put restrictions on its natural flow? Do we have no reservations because love is an unconditional commitment? After all, isn’t conditional love something that can be turned on and off? A conditional love requires that one of the spouses do something that pleases the other. At the simplest level, a child picks up his toy from the floor because his mother says, “That’s sweet. I love you, honey.” The message conveyed by such behavior is that one must earn love. People who are perfectionists and people pleasers have probably experienced love conditionally and never really felt it. They have not experienced that unconditional commitment. What box!
Dare I ask for commitment to what? To faith that love will be returned? In Christianity, it is remembered that “the faith that moves mountains” is worthless without love. We are told that even philanthropy without love lacks spirituality. In Love, we give to others. That is the essence of philanthropy; it is the essence of faith and must be the basis of our mutual interaction. When one loves, there has been a choice, an express wish made for the happiness of another person. We call that benevolence. The commitment then, is with a personal behavior that reflects benevolence.
Do not confuse benevolence with altruism. Altruism dictates that you sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others; that is, their needs claim your actions and behavior and even your life. If I may borrow a term from current computing jargon, benevolence allows; it allows you to derive your value from relationships with other people. Benevolence is not based on the misfortunes of others; while altruism seems to be driven by that fact. The simple act of giving someone the benefit of the doubt creates an avenue for benevolent behavior, an opportunity to demonstrate the value of unconditional love. When that love is a commitment to personal behavior that derives value from life itself, from interaction with others, and with society as a whole, then you are benevolent. Matthew Fox said, “Compassion is not a moral commandment but an ebb and flow of the fullest human and divine energies.” That is benevolence.
If a man wants to build a house, he uses wood. He must also provide a hollow space within that house; empty of wood, therefore both wood and the absence of wood are necessary to build that house. Building a love relationship is similar. The builder of Love must contribute values (wood) and time (space) to the relationship. Doing the opposite results in a house built of sand. You cannot be like the mobile support if you want a loving, personal and lasting relationship. If you are, there is no permanence. It will have slipped through your fingers before you had a chance to grab it, taste it, savor its delicacy.
The late syndicated columnist Jim Bishop wrote an inspiring essay called love something apart. In it, he states: ‘To love is to give. It is the unification of two people in one. It is possession and being possessed. But it is also jealousy, hostility, insecurity and despair. It is the only thing that must be resurrected every day.’ Confidence applies here because one trusts that there will be a resurrection. Love allows us to experience life and connect in a positive way. Denying the existence and experience of love, choosing not to practice it, denies your divinity. And that is sin! Deny your spirituality; a condemnation of all that is divine.
Buddhists tell us to pay close attention to the other person, to listen to what is actually being said so that we can recognize the source of what is being felt. If you do that, you can respond with care and compassion. And that is not benevolence? And that’s not love? Of course it is. But at the same time, it is much more. It is the total and complete recognition of the divine in all life. Swami Vivekananda has written, ‘real existence, real knowledge and real love are eternally connected with each other, all three in one; where one is, the others must be.
We make the mistake of loving in the wrong way. A man, for example, loves his wife. She wants her with him at all times, that she sit next to her at her social functions, that she eat with him, that she walk with him. He calls her several times a day from her workplace. This makes him a slave to his existence. This is not Love. Love would free her to be all she could be. And if she, in turn, loves him, she would help him cut the umbilical cord that he has tied to her. It is, after all, a mutual thing. Every act of love should bring happiness and joy, if not a sense of wonder. In true love, love does not deliberately cause pain or suffering. If it does, there has been a corruption.
To finish I want to leave you a little bit that a friend shared with me. Its author is unknown. Its titled The essence of compassion. “Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the old, compassionate with the hungry, and tolerant of the weak and the misguided, because at some point in your life you will have been all of these.”
