Heroes Not Zombies

“Love is what and who we dedicate our time to”

Katy Hessel. How to Live an Artful Life

“Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter.”

Mary Oliver

Another February, another moment to think about the importance of love. I don’t just mean romantic love, although that’s what we celebrate on the 14th, Valentine’s Day, named after Saint Valentine. I mean love as a way of life. The motherly love, almost all of us experience, which is characterised by unconditional care and attention. The brotherly love, which is the basis of any good society, loving not only your family, but also your neighbours, other people’s neighbours, human beings wherever they live, treating them with respect, care and attention. The love of Life, which underpins our attitude to the world, to all of Nature, ourselves included, to all forms of Life, without which none of this would exist, open to wonder, to the desire to know, to understand, to form strong caring bonds with all that is “not me”. Self love, based on self belief, taking time and making an effort to look after ourselves, to care for this astonishing, complex phenomenon of a body, of an embodied being. 

I can’t define love. I can’t even fully describe it. I can’t lay out its form, its nature or its character. But I know it. And you know it. Because love is an experience. It’s something we do, something we feel, something we live. It’s an attitude towards the world. It’s a way of paying attention. It requires, as Mary Oliver says, openness and empathy. 

We experience love with our hearts. Think of phrases like “heart to heart”, “heart felt”, “heart broken”. I remember Saint Exupery’s “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” and “The most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or touched, they are felt with the heart.”

What we pay attention to grows. What we pay loving attention to grows love. The way we live spreads the way we live. I guess that’s where the idea of karma comes from. Those ripples and waves we cause change the ocean in which we swim. If we live loving, then love spreads. If we live hating, then hatred spreads.

Nobody can make you love. You have to choose to love, pay attention to love, put your energy into love. 

I like this affirmation – “I choose to live a life of love, so that I, so that others, so that Life on this planet, can thrive.”

The old songs remains true, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love”, and “All we need is love” (well, maybe not “all” but it sure helps!)