To see and be seen—this very notion might fill us with an expansive sense of satisfaction and ease. We might feel joy at the prospect of being affirmed because of who we are, rather than as a result of any achievement or effort on our part. Too, the thought of seeing and accepting another person for who he or she is might also make us happy. Such mutual recognition feels good, solid, balanced, authentic, and real.
Take Ellen and Gil, who recently celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. “I work in an office with a lot of young people who come to me for dating advice,” Ellen wrote to me. “I always tell them to look for unconditional love. They ask me how they’ll know when it is present. Here’s the story I tell that always gets a lot of ‘Ohhhh … I get it now!’ responses.
“When Gil and I were first dating, I was living in Brooklyn, and he’d pick me up at the train when I went out to Long Island to see him. One time, he was driving when I started telling him about my parents’ divorce when I was seventeen—and all the before, during, and after of that. He slowed the car down and pulled over to the side of the road. When I asked him what was wrong, he said, ‘You are telling me something important, and I want to listen and give it my full attention.’
“That was the big IT for me. He still listens to me … amazing!”
He sees her; she sees him. It’s clear and it’s real. If our close relationships actually felt like this day to day, we’d have a wonderful life.
The skills available to us through mindfulness make it absolutely possible to bring this kind of love to our connections with others. What we learn in meditation, we can apply to all other realms of our lives. A friend of mine suggested that the title for this book be Real Love: Simple, but Not Easy. That’s a great description of the challenges we face.
UNLOADING OUR CULTURAL BAGGAGE
THE FIRST CHALLENGE is to slough off some limiting notions of love perpetuated by our culture. For example:
Love is an object or state to be attained, some kind of fixed ideal.
In reality, love is fluid; it’s a verb, not a noun. Love is a living capacity within us that is always present, even when we don’t sense it. And there are many kinds of love. Sanskrit has different words to describe love for a brother or sister, love for a teacher, love for a partner, love for one’s friends, love of nature, and so on. English has only one word, which leads to never-ending confusion.
The height of love is romantic love—ecstasy and torment.
As playwright Oscar Wilde wrote in The Importance of Being Earnest, “The very essence of romance is uncertainty.” It’s a journey filled with peril; we’re at the mercy of outside forces. We’re shot through with arrows. We fall hopelessly. We lose ourselves. We’re struck by lightning. We ask flower petals to reveal whether he or she “loves us or loves us not.” In reality, when our eyes are fixed on romance, we can miss the deep, sustainable love right before us. I’ll always remember overhearing a young woman tell a friend, “You know, I was telling my brother that I love my fiancé, but I miss how intense my last relationship was. And he said to me, ‘Yeah, and all you’re missing is the aggravation.’”
Love will rescue us and complete us.
This dictum tells us that without the love of another, we’re insufficient, unable to live fully on our own. This kind of magical thinking fills old-fashioned bodice-ripper novels and Hollywood movies, the land of achy breaky hearts and blue eyes crying in the rain. But it doesn’t have to shape our lives.
In a conversation we had, Linda Carroll explained to me that if we don’t question these messages, we may unconsciously accept two extreme visions of love: “There’s stage one, where everything is perfect, and stage three, where everything’s horrible, rather than good-enough love or quiet love or we-had-a-good-day-and-sat-peacefully-and-supported-each-other (but-not-too-much) love. That’s not a hot song. Who would buy it? It’s the drama of love that we’re hooked into in our culture, not the peacefulness of love.”
Or as Molly, a woman I met at a meditation center, told me, “When I was younger, the only topic that interested me was heartbreak. I was constantly heartbroken and fed off of it. I was always trying to capture that feeling of just being scraped out, raw, and desperate.”
I’m not knocking passion or fireworks, but when our focus is on seeking, perfecting, or clinging to romance, the charge is often generated by instability, rather than by an authentic connection with another person. Then, as novelist Zadie Smith has written in her novel White Teeth, “The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.”
RECOGNIZING REAL LOVE
REAL LOVE MAY run on a lower voltage, but it’s also more grounded and sustainable. From our first breath to our last, we’re presented again and again with the opportunity to experience deep, lasting, and transformative connection with other beings: to love them and be loved by them; to show them our true natures and to recognize theirs. In concert with them, we open our hearts to give and receive. We share joy and compassion, struggles and sorrows, gains and losses. And we learn in our bones what it means to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
Centuries ago, the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu described a profound and empowering love: “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” And though the earth has spun on its axis countless times since then, we can still hear that truth if we listen for it. As a character in Toni Morrison’s novel Jazz says, “Don’t ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it.”
My student Samantha wrote to me about the expansive, reverberating love she witnessed in her own family. “This past year, my father had heart surgery,” she said. “During his stint in the hospital, he pressed the call light for the nurse multiple times, which went unheeded. He ended up wetting the bed. My mother and I found him soaked and embarrassed when we returned from having lunch in the hospital cafeteria. My mother, who’s a former nurse, went to work immediately—removing his soiled clothing, taking him to the bathroom to clean him, and changing the bed.
“As I watched her work with such determination and humility, I thought, Now, that’s what love is. We are bombarded with media images of weddings, engagement rings, parties, and flowers, but this is not love. Love is defined by difficult acts of human compassion and generosity. I felt so proud of both of them that day (and always) for what they accomplished. They would be embarrassed by the telling of this story, but they are my heroes.”
In Samantha’s account, we see not only the depth of love between her parents but also how its power radiates outward to all who witness it. People often speak to me about feeling enlarged by their regard for another, stirred by mutual generosity and devotion. When I ask them to describe their experience of being loved, they talk about feeling at home in the world, cherished and recognized, affirmed and encouraged.
No connection is always easy or free of strife, no matter how many minutes a day we meditate. It’s how we relate to conflict, as well as to our differing needs and expectations, that makes our relationships sustainable. Even when we do our very best to treat those close to us with utmost respect and understanding, conflict happens. That’s life. That’s human nature.
But what’s also human nature, and what keeps us coming back to each other, is the fundamental desire to connect. “Human beings are social creatures,” wrote author and surgeon Atul Gawande in The New Yorker. “We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.”
THE ATTACHMENT PARADOX
THAT URGE TO connect persists from the cradle to the grave, according to the late British psychoanalyst John Bowlby. Bowlby is the architect of attachment theory, which credits our early connections, especially with our mothers, as shaping our relationships throughout our lives. If our caregivers were able to meet our mos
t important emotional needs, we gradually learn emotional regulation and self-care. We also develop the ability to form secure connections with others. If not, our attachment orientation will likely tend toward anxiety or avoidance.
I see both expressions of attachment difficulties in students all the time. For example, Nick’s mother lost a baby a year before Nick was born, and she was still drowning in grief during his infancy. Today, Nick tends to worry obsessively that the people who matter most to him will suddenly abandon him. On the other hand, Elaine, whose mother was hospitalized for several months soon after Elaine was born, tends to withdraw as soon as a potential partner gets close. During the course of psychotherapy and meditation retreats, both Nick and Elaine identified these early disruptions in attachment as a source of their challenges in relationships.
But are strong attachments really a good thing?
Those who are familiar with the language of Buddhist teachings are often puzzled by our human need for close connections and worry that such relationships represent an unhealthy form of clinging. Aren’t I supposed to practice just the opposite? they wonder. Isn’t non-attachment the preferred, more enlightened state? As one perplexed meditator said to me, “I want to be like the Dalai Lama, but I also want to love my husband.”
In reality, there is no conflict between loving others deeply and living mindfully.
There are particular people with whom we have strong connections, and this is a good thing: Our babies. Our beloveds. Our parents, siblings, and other family members. Our teachers. Our BFFs. In fact, the Dalai Lama often mentions special relationships in his life, notably with his mother, whom he credits with instilling in him the seeds of kindness and compassion.
The Dalai Lama has also said that we can live without religion and meditation, but cannot survive without affection. At the same time, the Buddhist teachings discourage us from clinging and grasping to those we hold dear, and from trying to control the people or the relationship. What’s more, we’re encouraged to accept the impermanence of all things: the flower that blooms today will be gone tomorrow, the objects we possess will break or fade or lose their utility, our relationships will change, life will end.
When we look closely at how the word attachment is used in both psychology and Buddhist thought, what we discover is more paradox than contradiction. As Baljinder Sahdra and Phillip Shaver, a psychology professor emeritus at the University of California–Davis, have pointed out in The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, the terms may confuse, but the underlying intentions are quite similar: “Both systems highlight the importance of giving and receiving love and of minimizing anxious clinging or avoidant aloofness and suppression of unwanted mental experiences.”
In my own teaching, I find it helpful to describe the parallels this way: the secure attachment of Western psychology is actually akin to Buddhist non-attachment; avoidant attachment is the inverse of being mindful and present; and anxious attachment aligns with Buddhist notions of clinging and grasping.
A WHOLE-BODY EXPERIENCE
WHATEVER LANGUAGE WE use to describe healthy relationships, when we’re in them, we feel nourished by them, in body as well as mind. Roger, one of my students, writes: “I have love for my wife, my daughter, myself, my experiences, my friends. But what’s the commonality? For me, it’s a physical sensation that arises when I’m in a loving state. It’s not a lustful state or a friendship state. It’s that warm quality we know from practicing lovingkindness and compassion. For me, real love occurs when I’m experiencing that physical sensation.”
In fact, scientists have begun to document the far-reaching physical implications of connectedness, which range from relieving pain to enhancing the function of our nervous systems.
Richard Davidson, a neuropsychologist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, investigated the effects of touch and companionship during stressful experiences. In a 2006 study, he and his colleagues used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to monitor the levels of fear and pain experienced by women when they were given mild electric shocks. When left completely alone, the women felt both fear and pain, and the areas of their brains responsible for emotion were particularly active.
However, if a member of the lab team held their hands, the women’s brains showed less fear, even though the physical pain remained. And when the women’s husbands held their hands during the shocks, their brain activity calmed down markedly at every level. It turned out that the calming effect was directly proportional to the connection they felt with their comforter.
Science tells us that love not only diminishes the experience of physical pain but can make us—and our beloveds—healthier. Barbara Fredrickson has studied what she terms micro-moments of connection. “It’s when you share a genuine positive feeling with another living being,” she explained to the audience at a talk in New York. “It could be laughing with a friend, or hugging your neighbor with compassion, or it could be smiling at a baby. It doesn’t even need to be your baby. It could be the baby on the plane.”
Fredrickson shared that science suggests these micro-moments may be more powerful than we think. Research found that when one person’s smiles, gestures, and postures began to be mirrored by the other person, the synchronization was more than skin deep.
“When you’re really connecting with somebody else,” Fredrickson said, “your heart rhythms come into sync; your biochemistries come into sync. Even your neural firings come into sync.” What’s more, that biological resonance of good feeling and goodwill has lasting effects. Increasing the quantity of micro-moments supports the function of the vagus nerve, the long cranial nerve that wends its way from the brain to the abdomen, enhancing the body’s ability to slow a racing heart and regulate inflammation and glucose levels.
“This isn’t just about your health,” Fredrickson said, “because when you’re really connecting with someone else, your heart is getting a mini-tune-up and so is theirs. The more you connect, the more you fortify this wiring to connect, and the more you lower your odds of having a heart attack and increase your odds of living a long, happy, and healthy life.”
Fredrickson says it gives her goose bumps to realize that merely smiling at someone can have significant health consequences. In her own life, she now sees every interaction as an opportunity to make those micro-moments happen, whether it’s through playing with her cats and two sons or smiling at the toddler on the plane. “It’s all part of a magic that keeps our bonds strong and our hearts healthy,” she said. “So stop waiting for the cupid’s arrow or the lightning bolt to choose you. Choose love. Choose to connect with the people in your midst.”
In this part, we’ll explore real love with our partners, our children, our parents and siblings, as well as our dear friends, close colleagues, and spiritual teachers. How do we love another skillfully? How do we take our beautiful and pure intentions and find expression for them? How do we contend with loss, disappointment, and hurt? And how do we stay vulnerable enough to experience real love, knowing that it’s impermanent?
In a nutshell: one moment at a time. But of course there’s more to it than that: simple, but not easy.
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BARRIERS TO FINDING REAL LOVE
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does.
—JAMES BALDWIN
“PULL THE THORNS FROM YOUR heart. Then you will see the rose gardens within you,” wrote Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi poet and mystic.
Why focus on the “thorns”—all of those barriers to love we may feel within—instead of cultivating it directly? And what are these thorns, anyway?
Though it may sound paradoxical, identifying our thoughts, emotions, and habitual patterns of behavior is the key to freedom and transformation. If we don’t acknowledge the places where we’re stuck, we inevitably twist ourselves into knots to bypass certain feelings and perceptions, and the love that would otherwise be available to us also becomes tied up in knots. But when we set an intention to explor
e our emotional hot spots, we create a pathway to real love.
For example, no matter what we think we should do, I don’t think you can coerce yourself into loving your neighbor—or your boss—when you can’t stand him. But if you try to understand your feelings of dislike with mindfulness and compassion, being sure not to forget self-compassion, you create the possibility for change. Your neighbor or your boss may still do things that annoy you, but the anger and tightness you feel in your chest whenever you see him is bound to diminish, leaving you freer and more available for love.
Instead of exclusively searching outside of ourselves for the source of our difficulties with others, we also look within. This is true for all relationships. Our longing for closeness brings us face-to-face with those inner blocks. And so we begin at home.
THE GREAT BALANCING ACT
YOU DON’T HAVE to love yourself unconditionally before you can give or receive real love. This turns the quest for self-love into yet another self-improvement project—an additional barrier to feeling whole and deserving of love.
The good news is that opportunities for love enter our lives unpredictably, whether or not we’ve perfected self-compassion or befriended our inner critic. When we develop our ability to love in one realm, we simultaneously nourish our ability in others, as long as we remain open to the flow of insight and compassion.
Just as a prism refracts light differently when you change its angle, each experience of love illuminates love in new ways, drawing from an infinite palette of patterns and hues. We gaze at an infant and feel our hearts swell, and when we notice it’s not the result of anything the baby has done, we can begin to imagine regarding ourselves the same way. We learn from any relationship in which we’ve made a heartfelt connection.
Yet this balancing act between self-regard and love for others is delicate; we suffer when our sense of worthiness relies too heavily on what we give or receive. Some of us give away too much of ourselves and call it love. Perhaps we’ve been told that if we love others enough and sacrifice more, we will ultimately be fulfilled. Some of us try to possess others in order to feel whole. Perhaps we’ve been told that if we feel control in our relationships, we are more empowered. But when we come from a place of inner impoverishment, love becomes merely hunger: hunger for reassurance, for acclaim, for affirmation of our being.
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