Most of us seek love, yet we have little understanding of it.
As I have explained elsewhere, love is not a feeling, but a behavior. It is the act of placing another’s needs above your own; an act of self-sacrifice.
We all recognize this love instinctively. The parents who sacrifice their comfort to give their children better lives, the children who sacrifice their own wants to care for aging parents, the lover who risks all to save their beloved: all are engaging in the act of loving.
Thus, to love without exhausting oneself, one must have enough of a surplus to be able to give it away. Without this surplus, one cannot love.
Children do not love
This is difficult for many to accept, but true. Children need. That is the nature of childhood. To make parents feel better, some have called this “need love”, but that’s a verbal deceit. It reveals our contempt for the needy.
But need is natural and we all need.
The human does not emerge from the womb fully grown. Gestation is only the beginning of a long journey. To create a kind, loving, and secure adult requires many years of patient teaching and nourishing. It requires a healthy diet, plenty of exercise of both mind and body, a safe space, trust, love, teachers, and role models.
When the infant first arrives in the world it is a tiny bundle of need. There is no room for love. What can the infant sacrifice for another? Nothing.
There is nothing wrong with this. How could it be otherwise? Infants are helpless. It takes years of patient work before they are even remotely capable of caring for themselves, let alone others.
This does not mean that small children cannot achieve moments of true love. As we grow and mature, we begin to accumulate surplus. At least some of the time and in some ways, we can take care of ourselves, and that leaves time to devote to others.
And for children to learn properly and to grow into adults, they must be taught to use that surplus for loving rather than for fulfilling selfish impulses. That is the nature of maturing: overcoming selfish, childish impulses.
Maturing is also about overcoming the self, recognizing and internalizing that there are others out there who are of equal importance and value. It takes a long time and careful encouragement to inculcate such values.
The seasons of life
And so it is that, done well, life has two seasons. The first is the season of needing and taking. We are all born into this season. We begin as nothing but need.
And as we grow and mature, we become less needy and more capable of giving. It is not black and white, taking or giving, all or nothing. The need gradually diminishes as the ability to give gradually increases.
If we are doing it right, and if we have the right nourishment and guidance, then we give more and more, and need less and less.
At some point in life — and earlier is better — we cross the threshold and begin giving more than we take, loving more than we need.
And this brings us to the second season of life: the season of loving and giving.
Our foremost goal in life should be to reach the season of loving and giving as soon as possible, and to remain in it as long as possible.
Life is circular
But life is circular. Often, in our later years, our surplus dwindles as we become worn and even frail. We begin to need more, and we have less to give.
There may come a time when we return to the season of needing and taking. And there is nothing wrong with this evolution either. It is the natural course of things: the nature of the universe is returning.
What is most important to understand is that we must embrace both seasons fully. When in the season of needing, be not afraid to take what is offered. There is no shame so long as it is not taken for selfish purposes.
When in the season of giving, give as much as you can.
Most of all, understand that just as those in the season of taking need to receive, those in the season of loving need to give.
The worst thing you can do to someone in the season of giving is to refuse their gift. To do so is to negate the value of their life. Those who fully embrace the seasons of life give because they must give. It is their nature. It is their time to do so.
Too often, those in need are afraid to take what is offered. The result is that both taker and giver suffer: the taker because their needs remain unfulfilled; the giver because their gifts have gone to waste.
The seasons are meant for each other
One of the most senseless mistakes we make in our modern culture is segregation by age and maturity. The young and immature spend all their time with similarly young and immature friends. The older and wiser are left to seek solace among themselves.
We have limited the association of the needy and the giving to the parental relationship. And woe unto those for whom that relationship fails or does not exist. They are often left with nothing.
A smart society ensures that young and old, sophomoric and sagacious, needy and loving spend plenty of time together, and that the needy are encouraged to seek out the giving (and vice versa) so that both are fulfilled.
This goes for parent and child, teacher and student, mentor and protégé, and, yes, for lovers, too. Youth with youth is the blind leading the blind. Adult with adult may be pleasant, but what a waste of wisdom!
Our current exploitative and misguided consumer culture feasts on foolish and infantile minds. The coerced separation of the “generations” acts to prevent the infantile from maturing into wise adults and careful consumers, as does the ageism it engenders.
The obsession with youth and infantile behavior is a disease, perhaps the modern disease.
The most important quality that we can teach to the young is humility. The most profitable action we can take for humanity is to find those few true adults — the ones who matured despite the obstacles — and employ them to inspire the immature to seek and embrace maturity.
For it is only as a mature species that we will survive the coming cataclysm.