It's tricky business being friends. You trust your personality, your comfort zone, and ultimately your vulnerability to someone and it becomes their job to navigate the careful balancing act to not to take advantage of that fact. It's obvious that your trust has been broken when someone spills your secrets to your arch nemesis, cheats on you with the secretary, steals your favorite shirt, or uses you to go to an exclusive party. But what about when someone's just a downright ass? It's not just simply being obnoxious or rude, it's a spitting on the emotional control you've willingly entrusted to them. We trust people to be good to us when we're good to them first, and our internal sense of justice rears its self righteous head when a friend turns around and is insulting and impatient toward us. We put our emotions on a balancing point, and it only takes the rude words of someone we place our happiness in to blow it all to smithereens. When I love, and I don't receive that love back, but instead the opposite, it encourages me to put up a wall toward others. And as much of a truth as that is, I go back to the realization that we can't learn to love someone unless we've learned that that someone will break our trust, and forgive them for that and love past that, coupled with the realization that we will and have already broken their trust already: but this unconditional attitude is only permissible with a promise from both parties to commit to being Good to one another. Am I now saying it's permissible to throw someone away when a relationship becomes unhealthy emotionally or the give outdoes the take? And suddenly it all sounds like a rule book, and I realize the point is just to love, that I will never be able to love unconditionally, and that I am in fact rearing my self righteous head at this very moment. The point of this is that people can break your trust by being rude. That was the point.
4/27/11
John Mayer, December 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQSGa8nZs8g
ReplyDeleteHis very next album happened to be battle studies, of which he says, "The album is called Battle Studies and that's because it incorporates a lot of the lessons, a lot of the observations, and a little bit of advice. Like a handbook, like a heartbreak handbook."
Lots of people have not found love, trust, "I got your back"... to be easy.
I'm not so sure unconditional love, in it's entirety, is possible. I honestly don't think that even giving half of your day to others unconditionally is impossible. I think that's one of the reasons why God gave people hugs, tears, lips to kiss, smiles to charm... If He really expected us to be unconditional. He would have left us all with blank faces and no way to communicate joy, and still expected us to give ourselves to each other.
But he doesn't and that's beautiful. He takes joy when a person gives time, energy, comfort to another, when another doesn't deserve. But I imagine he takes more joy when the receiver is thankful and returns some of that energy back in the form of gratitude, then when the receiver turns his/her back and goes on dodging the individual who is only trying to help.
Unconditional doesn't mean you don't get anything in return, it simply means that you don't demand a return, or hold so much expectation of it, that you will not perform the task again, if a return should fail to be present.
For example, if I hold a door for someone at a fast food restaurant, I expect them to say thank you in return, because that's common courtesy. However, when the time comes that someone doesn't say thank you, I don't curse them under my breath, or think ill of their upraising, or other such negative things. I simply go on out the door and go on my way, shrugging it off. Ready to hold the door next time an opportunity arrives. I still see that as unconditional.
I may be wrong, and this might be the most long winded reply I've ever had to a blog post, but I did read the last chapter (charity) ;)
*I honestly don't think that even giving half of your day to others unconditionally is POSSIBLE... my bad
ReplyDeleteAnother thought:
ReplyDeleteIt's not like God said to Adam & Eve. "Thou shalt (because God always speaks in the King James, right)... "Thou shalt keep the garden, and all of it's plants cared for, and never shall you expect to eat of it's fruit"
No, instead God says, care for the garden, and by the way go ahead and eat from any of the trees you see (except for that one).
The first is a picture of give give give, and don't take.
The second is a picture of give, and take... but don't take too much.
The second seems much more natural, but of course this isn't an interaction between people, so it's a decent amount different.
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For that I think we can learn a lot from the parables of Jesus, and how he interacted with the folks around him. And demanded of them different things.
To the pharisees he said, Stop showing off, stopping being hypocritical, go help someone else out for once.
To the prostitues he said, Be loved and change your ways.
I'm not sure how to analyze this yet, but I think there is something key about why Jesus interacted with different people differently. You can't love a prostitute like you love a pharisee.
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So as far as how this should determine how people should love each other unconditionally... I'm not sure.
But I do know, that taking the time to plant flowers along side some old ladies house, when you know she can't pay you, and you know she won't give any type of work in return except for the work of a smile. Is a form of unconditional love... I think the even bigger question would be, "what if she didn't even smile?" If you were asked to go back there a year later and plant flowers, would you?
THAT is when unconditional is tested. How far will you go? Jesus made it all the way. God doesn't expect us to... but in a way he does. But I think he would find it odd if you were discouraged from trying because you failed.
Anyways... enough rambling. My thoughts are all over the place. I guess all I wanted to say is, "don't be so hard on yourself. God isn't."