We Are Born to Be Loved, and To Love Others

Near the end of the movie, “Shadowlands,” a film about the life of scholar and author, Clive Staples Lewis, and the love he found late in life with Joy Davidman, there is this statement:  “We love to know we are not alone.”  If you have seen this film, you know this was a complete change from an earlier statement:  “We read to know we are not alone.”

What strikes me about the true story, which the movie portrays very well, is how C.S. was drawn out of his safe, insulated cloistered, intellectual life as an academic–and also opened up in his emotional life as a Brit, by this honest, vivacious American woman. The relationship and its process is too complex to describe here.

However, this movie provides me with the opportunity to write about the fundamental importance of love for all human beings.

I am writing a book on violence in our world, and some things we can learn from reflecting on the ethical teachings of Jesus. And Jesus had much to say about love. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. As human beings, we know something about love, just by being human.  Let’s think about love, something everyone needs, wants, and thinks about–its valued presence, its hoped-for appearance, or even its denial and the sadness arising from that.

Conceived and Raised in Love

You and I were conceived by the love of two people, our parents. There are a few of us who were conceived not from love, but passion, and the shock of our conception, mutated into something we sensed: we were not welcome. However, for nearly all of us, we were conceived by the love of two persons, expressed naturally in sexual union.

Our mothers carried us for nine months, more or less. While we were within them, they ate better, were more cautious in where they walked, took vitamins, and generally took better care of themselves, because we were within them. They loved us before they felt us move within them, and they carried us to term, excited yet also wondering about all the changes to come in their lives, when we were born.

There are many people who forget, or who never have considered, the years of love and care it took to bring them from infancy, through the toddler years, and then on and on, until we finally were “on our own.” (And in these days of a collapsing economy, and uncertain employment, being “on our own” often is of shorter duration than ever before, since some of us return to live with our aged parents, because of trials we face in life.)

Yes, if we have children, we think of OUR point of view, of all the care our children require; however, I do not think very many consider the Universal Human Condition: that love, nurture, and care are required much longer in humans than in other mammals. Human beings are not born as snakes, to wriggle and crawl away for their first insect meal. No, we are delicate and fragile, and for so long a time. We are dependent on Love, for many years. Love is part of our very nature, experienced and learned.

Estrangement From Love

Of course, one of the tragedies that began to occur after the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, and then the Electronic Age, and now in our Technological, or Digital Age, is that the natural process of human dependence has been unnaturally interrupted. Today, just for survival, both parents often work. There is less time for children, though the children accept this as “normal life, like other kids.” Then everyone has cell phones, and they take away time from each other, constantly ringing in texts, forwarded data from the internet, photos taken of everything at all times. Love, natural human love, gets squeezed out of human life, by these basically unnatural interruptions.

Psychologists, psychiatrists, cultural historians, social anthropologists, and even professionals in corrections, talk about how the deprivations of normal, natural, unremitting and regular Love-Denied, create so many dysfunctional people.

There is a phrase used by some people to describe other groups around the world:  “Third World Countries.”  This is a condescending phrase used by people who imagine they are in First World Countries.  They have “arrived” and the Third World peoples are striving to catch up.  They are ignorant.  They are deprived.  They are just dreaming to join the First World.

The truth is, some of those peoples do want to live in nations that are safer, or where everyone has an indoor toilet, or where there is an abundance of clean water, and all those supermarket shelves filled with sugar and fat in thousands of multi-colored cartons and boxes.  However, there are millions of those peoples who are perfectly happy with where they live, because they have plenty of love in their families, clans, and communities.  I’m not being false.

If you look all over the world–and disregard the language and cultural differences–everybody wants to be loved, and to have their love welcomed and received.  Love is truly the universal language understood by everyone in the world.  There are different culturally-conditioned ways in which love (and loyalty) are expressed, but love is in there, right at the center.

Back to the Movie, “Shadowlands”

C.S. Lewis’s mother died when he was a young boy.  Perhaps for that reason–the deprivation of his mother’s love–he turned to books, educational achievement, and the mental occupation with the world of imagination.  The phrase which appeared early in the movie was, “We read to know we are loved.”

However, though the mature man, C.S., was challenged and at first merely stimulated, by the open, communicating, American woman named Joy, who just punched right through his insulated academic routines, he finally was led to realize the love he had for her; how much he needed her; and then, the most glorious thing happened, in the midst of tragedy.

Joy developed a case of cancer which eventually killed her.  Yet her new husband’s love was continuing to bloom and mature, as he cared for her with gentleness and constant care.  He was right there with Joy, until she passed from this life into the care of God.  As I watched his transformation, I thought to myself, “He finally is being shed of the academic chrysalis.  He is feeling what it is to be fully human, to love someone; to stand by them in suffering; and to learn the price love demands.”

Finding Ourselves Again, by Being Loving People

Our society does not talk much about real love.  There is much talk about love, lovemaking, sex, sexiness, in advertisements, in entertainment, and in the media.  The faces we see plastered on the media–our cultural icons–most often are young, beautiful, handsome, fit, and so many items about their “love life.”

But I ask you, reader, to think about your innermost Self.  Think about the empty places, the empty spaces.  Consumerism is designed to make people think that “buying this or that” will fill up the emptiness with things, or trips to beautiful places, or exclusive experiences.  Yet if you were to have unlimited funds, and had the capacity to buy whatever you wanted, love still would be what you would most want.  (Yes, I know the saying, “Money cannot buy happiness, but it’s better than poverty” or other variations.)

I have been very fortunate to know some extremely “poor people” within this, the United States, which many call a First World Country.  If I described their living conditions, you could not imagine them being happy, or having much peace, there was, and is, so much physical deprivation.  However, while I am not romanticizing or idealizing, some of these poor people are extremely happy; have peace; and have contentment.  The reason?  There is so much love in their families.

They have virtually nothing materially, yet understand–through being completely normal human beings, born into love, dependent on love–love is the most important thing in their lives, and on the earth.

Determine to Center on Love

Some of our parents loved us very well; some not so well; and some not well at all; and some in unhealthy and harmful ways. And our own adult emotional conditions reflect the foundations and degrees of love we experienced.

However, even for those of us who developed “emotionally disfigured” or “emotionally crippled,” still, we know we were born for love. We know we are hungry for love. We know we want to be loved and, yes, we want to be able to love others, and have our love welcomed and received.

I extend to you a very small and reasonable challenge.  Begin today to use today to love your family; love your coworkers; love your neighbor; love strangers who cross your path; and finally, if you are not a theist, take the very small “risk” of loving a God in whom you do not yet believe.  There is a scripture in the tiny little letter of First John that says, “God is Love.”  You may not believe in God right now, but God believes in you.

I can tell you this, from personal experience.  If you take the life you have, right now, not tomorrow (which you never ever have), and start loving people around you, love will return into your own heart and life, and you will have peace, satisfaction, and contentment that no money can buy.