seeking something more

One of my greatest frustrations in life is this concept about loving your neighbor. I mean, I’m kind to most people. I’m tolerant of people. I’m generally an agreeable person.  But being kind or tolerant or agreeable is not what love is. It’s a bit of it, perhaps, but only a very small bit.

My frustration is increased even more by the fact that I’m an introvert and avoid most people. I really don’t know a lot of people. By effect, I don’t really have many people to share this confusing thing called love. I mean, I guess, I can love people I don’t know in person, but that makes my problem even more complicated. How do I love people I have not seen or talked to? Do I end up just loving my conceptions of them, or can I really love them from afar? I know that we as the Church are one body, and distance is only some physical thing that is weak against our spiritual union. That is not my problem. My problem is that it’s hard to for me to separate abstract things from concrete things.

Last semester, just for fun, I read C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, and one of the things that I noticed is Professor Weston’s loyalty to humanity. This does not result in any goodness. As other characters from the book pointed out, Weston would happily sacrifice humans for the sake of this abstract concept of “humanity.” However, as Dr. Peter Kreeft said in one of his lectures. God doesn’t command us to love humanity. He commands us to love our neighbors. He doesn’t command us to love abstractions or concepts. He asks us to love real people with real faults and real value. He asks us to love each man and woman and child, not some vague idea in our mind of society. I was also reminded of this fact, of the need to love humans instead of humanity, when reading Centisimus Annus, or at least reading the first few paragraphs of it. John Paul II here over and over states that a big problem in modern society is that we tend to think of men as simply cogs in a machine, as simply parts of the State. That’s not what humans are according to God. According to God, each human being is someone made in His image, made with profound dignity, made so that one day he may share in the happiness and love of his Creator.

I don’t want to fall in that trap. Nice doesn’t cut it when you’re a Christian, and humanity has little value when you forget to value each human. Only love suffices and even overflows, and that I can only learn from God.

When I can imagine the lover as God and the song still holds true.

I love you. And, if I don’t, I ought to love you. The ultimate law of GOD is to love. Love is the first and final rule of Christians.

You indulge me, my King. You give me too much spiritual wine.

Exactly. Emotions come and go, but love endures. When the warm and fuzzy feelings go, it’s love that stays. To use an odd metaphor, the feelings are symptoms, but they’re not the disease. The feelings help and often come, but the feelings aren’t love. This reminds me of one of the chapters of The Screwtape Letters.

He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs—to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such through periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creatures He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best.

It made me smile that you said that because that would be exactly how I describe it. In love. Normally all this being-in-love stuff would bring my mind to biological explanations about hormones. It even sounds off to say, “I’m in love with God,” but that’s really the best human words can offer. I feel overwhelmed, happy, hyper, and indescribably unbounded when I think about Him. I hope it doesn’t go away, but I sort of know that the feeling will go away some time. But, that’s what memory, faith, and a little perseverance are for. For now, though, I’ll enjoy every bit of it.

I’m not a people person. I was incredibly shy as a child, and I’m still a bit timid and awkward when it comes to people. So, while what I’m about to say might be common sense to all, I’ve only realized this recently.

I think this little epiphany has been brought about by the end of high school, which was more sad than exciting for me. Only during these last few days and last two weeks did I realize how much I value the work my teachers have done for me, how much I love how my friends listen to me, how much I love listening to them, and how these people who I’ve taken for granted everyday really mean something to me. It’s a late realization, I know, and quite odd of me not have known it earlier.

“The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost,” said G.K. Chesterton. Some time ago, even though I love Chesterton as an author, I thought this quote was a little off. Shouldn’t we love those things right now? But, somehow, it really didn’t click, and it’s only in these moments, as I leave these people behind (not completely, I know) that I can actually appreciate this quote. It’s only as I realize that I’m not going to see this people every other day now. I’m not going to hear their jokes and laughs and stories throughout the week.

People mean something to me. I don’t know how that has escaped me before. I guess it was because I was that shy little girl who avoided most everyone. I didn’t really form those connections and share as much of myself. So, when I left people, it didn’t mean as much. And, I wish I had formed those connections. I like this sad feeling. It’s an odd mix of lost and overwhelming appreciation for what those people have given to me.

I think I have a new goal for myself, to learn to compliment people, to thank them for each little thing, to appreciate each moment with each person I meet. I often joke how I have a heart of stone, but I think I’ll learn how to give even that away, to somehow break it into pieces, and give it to the people I meet. It will hurt, I know, but it’s a good sadness.

I’m crossing into the realm of cliché but at the moment, I am not concerned with that, only with the truth. I know that with all the AP classes I’ve taken, that the best thing I’ve learned from high school is how to love, how to give a bit of yourself away at that awful risk of never getting it back. Most of the times, those pieces don’t come back, you get new and more wonderful pieces from wonderful people who contribute a bit of themselves to you, and even when you give a bit of yourself away, and it doesn’t come back, it’s an opportunity to rebuild yourself, to make something new and satisfying.

And, to add to all that, I’ve also learned that thinking about your worth is the worst thing someone can do. It leads to either a lack of self-confidence or pride. Give your heart away and give yourself away even when you don’t think what you have isn’t worth much. For all the situations the following quote can apply to, I think it fits here best. “One person’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Most of us don’t know what we have, what we give to other people each day, or how much we mean to other people. We don’t know the smiles we give others and the inspiration we pass on every day.

So, of all the things I’ve learned from these four years of homework, quizzes, and tests, the most important could be summed up in the following: Give of yourself, but also let others give to you.