“To love disinterestedly”
Last week I wrote about the undiscovered country – that country that resides within each of us and is the essence of every person we meet. This week I am writing really about the same exact thing, but with a tighter focus. Having realized my diplomatic mission with the other, I then am examining what I most desire in that interaction. What follows is pretty raw –though these are themes I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand, they are also things I’ve spent a lot of time running away from. I expect it’s like this for most of us, so I offer this glimpse into my reflection in the hope that it is useful.
When I first encountered the idea that our goal in life is to learn to love disinterestedly, I was really very surprised, and not at all pleased. It really did sound like a bunch of crap – to use one word that encapsulates this deep yearning for connection and put it next to a word that sounds completely empty.
I have mucked about for decades with wondering whether to try to be happy. Or try to be good. Or try to be right. All of these seemed to be in conflict with one another, and all of them were *very* compelling, and none of them were things I seemed to ever be successful at. So began a rock, paper, scissors game of, “Well if I can’t be happy, at least I can be right.” Or “Well, if I can’t be right at least I can be good.” Or “Well if I can’t be good, then at least I can be happy.” And none of it worked. I’d really like to be able to say I’ve figured it out. I really havn’t. But I think I’m getting closer to an understanding that happy and good and right don’t have to be in conflict, and perfecting any one of them will depend upon not neglecting the other two. The crazy part is, these three ambitions were really driven by my ego. My ego would be really super pleased with any one of these. But as I said, it doesn’t work.
So…I don’t recall precisely when it happened. I do remember praying after Mass, some years ago, and reflecting on how hard I worked to try to make at least one of these things happen: happy, good, or right. Just one of them I’d be glad to settle for. And suddenly it was just this feeling of… “Put all that aside. What’s left? What’s essential?” Happiness cant be the goal of it all – this world is full of inescapable sorrows. Being right is, if you’ve noticed, a pretty illusory thing – a constant case of winning battles while losing wars. And being good is maybe achievable for the half second before you open your eyes to start the day.

So as I stripped away my desire to be happy, or good, or right, I was left with love. And that was scary. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said every day do one thing that scares you. This is my main scary thing I do every day – to find a way to be a channel for love, and seek the other’s objective good. That’s the disinterested part – to love without *expectation* of anything in return, without condition – to simply *be* in that space, bravely.

This would be incomplete without a discussion of the impulse that pulls our attention towards another. This is that raw passion that can obliterate that illusion of separateness in a very sudden and shocking way, and the fallout from which can be a mess of emotions and forces. Again, when you can pull back and look for the other’s objective good, and set aside the ego’s drive (happy, right, good), it clears a bit and decisions are simpler (though not easy.)
Really this entire essay could just be replaced with some words I put together a while back:

I want you like a river wants the ocean.

Of course, rivers don’t want things. Rivers simply are. They are channels. And this “you” that I perceive is really nothing separate from myself. As Tagore wrote,
Once we dreamt that we were strangers. We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.