I love humankind. It’s people I can’t stand

"I love humankind. It’s people I can’t stand." - Charles Schulz

Well, crikey, mates. Let’s talk about how hard it is to love people.

There are different kinds of love – there’s the love we feel spontaneously for people we know, and there’s that more challenging kind of love, agape, "non-erotic love, as of God for humankind..." Thank you, Webster’s dictionary.

It’s hard always to be on good terms with the people we love, because relationships tend to be dynamic, not static, and people tend to be annoying, not pleasing. What is much harder is loving people we don’t know but know about, who are not like us, whose behavior we do not like. Annoying people in our own lives, people whom we cannot stand, and on a broader scale, people like political despots who kill and torture their own people. How do you love those people?

Women and men who practice a life of faith and/or spiritual awareness, such as Christians or Buddhists, for example, are called or commanded to love everyone, without prejudice. That’s a pretty tall order. I can’t do it.

By the time you reach your 60s you are not so subject to the hormone-driven emotions of your earlier years, and you’re getting the hang of this life thing. You don’t freak out as easily as you did when you were younger. Also, by now you have seen a lot of friends and family die.

In thinking about people I have known who have passed on, I’ve realized that it was their flaws that made them memorable. If they had not been the whole people they were – loveable, exasperating, heart melting, impossible – I would not have loved them as much as I did. People with grit and edges provide the best stories at the wake, and live the longest in memory. It makes me hope that when I die people will have more to say than, "Well, she was nice."

Yeah, I know, I’ve got that made.

What I’m saying is that the people we love, in their humanity, can be as unlovable as anyone we don’t know and don’t love, and that’s the point. We are called to love all humanity, including ourselves, including those we know and those we don’t, impartially and with compassion.

Are all human beings equally capable of grace and cruelty, greed and generosity? I think so. I don’t know what makes one person turn out to be a Gandhi, and another person turn out to be a Gaddafi. I know that most of us are somewhere in between those two extreme personalities.

The question is not, "how can I love that person?" The question is, "How can you not?" I don’t know why truth is so often counter-intuitive, but it is. Love with compassion and without prejudice, for your life, for the lives of your children, for the lives of all. That is what we are called and commanded to do. It is impossible for most of us, but we must walk that way, in hope and sincere dedication, expect to fail, and get up and keep going.

Which brings me to the next conundrum. To what degree, and in what way, do you resist the evil actions of despots, tyrants, and sociopaths? Do you say, "Oh, I love that evil moron with compassion," and skip away singing, "La-la-la?" Short answer: no.

We’ll talk more later.

Thanks and a tip o’ the hat to Father Tryphon, whose Morning Offering blog earlier this week started this train of thought. You can read what Father Tryphon has to say at
www.morningoffering.blogspot.com and it will be worth your while to take a look.