The idea behind the topic “Learning to Love” was to explore the proposition that becoming a loving person is something that can and should be learned. I want to talk first about what love is, because I expect most of us are not really up to speed on the subject. Then I want to consider why we should learn to love. Next, I want to look at a few techniques of learning to be loving. Finally, I want to talk about the magical consequences of love learned and shared.
What Is Love?
When Jesus gave his new commandment to love one another even as he had loved all people, he was talking about love as the desire to do good for others. He was talking about love like the feeling and attitude a parent has toward his child. The parent’s relationship with his child involves his desire to equip his child for life as best he can. At its finest, the parental role is serving, unselfish, and even occasionally self-sacrificing. This type of love puts the other person’s real welfare first. It is fair, firm, just, merciful, giving, tolerant, and always unself-centered.
Love is unselfishness. It is the desire to do good to others. It is the urge to be a friend to everyone and help them through life. It is entirely possible to feel this way about everyone, even if they are undeserving of such friendship, or refuse it, or ridicule it, or even attempt to misuse it. And so, you see, the love we are talking about is not a sentimental quality. In fact, it can be approached unemotionally, even in a formal manner. Friendship, unselfishness, and the desire to do good for others can be approached even as a somewhat formalized code of honorable personal conduct if that is personally comfortable.
Why Learn to Love?
If you can project how a friend would behave and what is unselfish behavior under the circumstances and what is best for everyone concerned, then you can determine what love would do. Loving one another in this way does not appear to be a common standard of behavior in our world. This leads me to conclude that it is not a quality which arises automatically with age or without effort in any great number of people. Of course, there are a few people who have a talent for displaying the qualities of love. Their special talent is a gift to us all. It shows us all what the possibilities are.
Techniques for Learning to Be Loving
Once demonstrated by talented people, these possibilities can then be imitated by the rest of us. In this way, the talents which are distributed among a people are a mechanism of continuing revelation. Therefore, instead of becoming discouraged with ourselves for being unable to achieve loving behavior as easily as some others may do it, we should be encouraged that the talent of others demonstrates what can be achieved.
Without the revelatory effect of talent, many things that we can all learn would never be discovered. And so it is with loving one another as Jesus instructed us to do. If he and other talented people had not demonstrated what a love-filled life looked like, it would be nearly impossible to imagine. But now that it has been demonstrated, it can be learned. This is what Jesus was urging all people to do–to learn and practice being a loving person with everyone, especially with those who would abuse you.
Learning to live lovingly is not easy to master, but of all the things we can learn in this life, it is the most important and the most cosmically real and durable. Furthermore, the benefits of living life with love for all of one’s fellows begin to flow even from the most imperfect and unmasterly loving efforts.
Since lovingness is learnable, what course of education is appropriate for learning it? The self re-education required to live life lovingly is really two somewhat separate, progressive processes. One of these tandem processes is the spiritual-intellectual process of becoming committed to the idea of living life lovingly. It involves all of the thinking about, praying about, and asking our spiritual helpers for enhanced ability to live lovingly. It is all of the planning, all of the study, all of the personal spiritual illumination about living lovingly, and all of the dreaming of what it would be like. The various aspects of the spiritual-intellectual process of learning to live lovingly are essential to success even though they are incomplete if the complementary process is not also followed.
The complement is the process of actually putting one’s intellectual concepts of lovingness into practice. The experience of acting on our theories of lovingness tests their practicality. Love should be wise as well as generous. Sometimes it is in the better long-term interests of the other person to permit him to experience the unpleasant consequences of his behavior than it is to save him from them. Living lovingly requires continuous analysis of what is best for the other person, constant self discipline to avoid the temptation to punish, and constant reassessment to be sure that selfish interests do not creep back into our decisions regarding what we think is in the best interests of the other person.
Living lovingly is not boring. It is intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally active and challenging. The process of putting love into action is challenging too. It is only through trial and error that we can really tell what works and what does not, what is real and what is mere erroneous theory and whether we are really committed to living life well or would rather simply dream about it.
Learning to love requires observing, thinking and trying. A good technique for learning to love is careful and prayerful observation. Observe how people behave when they are being loving. Observe how people express themselves to those they love. Observe how friends treat each other. Notice what unselfishness looks like in all sorts of circumstances. It is also helpful to try to treat others as you would like to be treated. Observing, thinking, praying, reflecting, acting and then reflecting still more on the nature of friendship, unselfishness and the desire to do good for others–these are ways to learn to live lovingly.
Magical Consequences
The magic of living lovingly is part of the attractiveness that makes it contagious. It spreads, it propagates, it grows and the world is changed for the better just because you live life lovingly. And, slowly, as this benign virus of love is spread, error and evil are conquered, just as in an earlier era the wild beasts of the forest were conquered by the progress of civilization.
It is interesting that the contagious quality of love makes it possible for those of us who are willing to study and practice ways of living lovingly to be able to teach love even to those who would reject any formal teaching of love. Therefore, it is extremely important for us to study and practice living the loving life. God has provided the revelation of love to us all in the lives of Jesus, some saints, and some prophets. The next step is for us to imitate the examples. When this is done, love will have enough carriers to spread the contagion even to those who would refuse to work at living more lovingly. It is an important service we all can do for our Father and in the process we can have a large measure of spiritual joy and happiness as by-products.
