But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. ― Margery W. Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit
25 years ago I had my life burglared out from under me by a series of traumas. Didn’t even hear the phone ring without freezing from what now?
Trying to provide some gentle direction, a friend gave me a book — one of those Thought for the Day things. I only remember one of the thoughts. It went something like this: Loving unconditionally isn’t about I’ll love you no matter what you do, but rather unconditional love really means dropping all my shields. Living in Realism. To quote Popeye, “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam.”
‘Authenticity’ has a nice cadence to it, yet I prefer ‘realism.’ Realism is a blend of acceptance, rigorous honesty, and wu wei (a Zen principle, literally not pushing).
What grows with this relaxed practice are a couple of gentle behaviors:
I listen better, and I entertain silence.
I am hardly afraid of others’ love.
There ain’t no quo, no sense of negotiation, so grace arrives in the space left by discarded expectations.
And in that gentle space also arrives a marvelous change of perspective. I find myself genuinely interested in other people, not just with what we share but with what we don’t.
I am so grateful that no two of us are alike. That means I can love you not in spite of your difference but because of it. —Mark Yozart
I am not special, aka more or less deserving, worthy, or entitled than any other of the 8,000,000,000 + members of the crowd. I am, however, unique. You too – and you, and you, and . . .
I suppose I may have an evil twin somewhere, but we’ve never crossed paths.
If my connection to you depends on alikeness, whether geography, sports team favorite, spiritual type, gender, on and on, then we can only brush each other, never fully embrace until our distinction—e.g., you love okra, I despise it—becomes as essential to our mutuality as our parallels. Loving alignment flourishes through the tension of alike/different. Alike alone creates Group Think, and even writing those two words makes my tummy twinge.
So we may standing right next to each other, we may be looking at the same thing, but we never see things the same. Kinda/sorta, perhaps, but different, and the tension of that difference creates an elastic space for love.
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?—Henry David Thoreau
I’m beginning to realize that empathy, a color of love for me, only needs tiny tweaks of what Thoreau suggests. To be honest, I don’t want to channel you, or vice-versa. But as these instants gather, even few-and-far-between, I want to listen to you better, calm and candid, neutral and accepting, bathed in realism, and then these little miracles grace our journey.
“I love you” is great. “I love you too” is splendid.
I mean, really!
That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.
― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit
