As you all know, Valentine’s Day is upon us, and so we’re all starting to think about love. The brand of love that is most associated with Valentine’s Day is romantic love…that visceral feeling we all get when we’re around someone special. Many of us have been there, me included, and I’m blessed to say that like some of you, I’ve very much in love with someone right now; in fact, I’ve been in love with my wife since the moment I saw her almost nine years ago. When we got married, I remember feeling many of the same things that some of you probably do around your significant other. I remember a lump in my throat, butterflies in my stomach, and a sudden inability to speak (and if you have me in class, that might be hard to believe). But what I also remember about that day was the conscious choice that she and I made together: to love each other through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, and for better or worse.
And it is that second manifestation of love that prompted me in this Chapel talk.
Christian Scripture, in St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, describes love as “patient and kind” and state that it “protects, trusts, and always perseveres.” These are wonderful sentiments, and it warms the heart to hear them or to speak them; you have likely heard them at a wedding or even read them in a card. But I urge you to note that while love is described here as a great many things, easy is not one of them Genuine love, as it is presented here and throughout the doctrines of so many of the world’s religions, is not that characterized by how we feel when we’re with blissfully enamored with a special someone. Rather, it is characterized by consciously loving everyone, even, and especially, when it is difficult to do so.
Real love, my friends and colleagues, is a choice. And it is not only difficult at times, but it is also necessary.
Indeed, His Holiness the Dalai Lama describes Love not as a Luxury, but as fundamental to the survival of the human race. In his view, we need love as we need food or water. He further opines that as human beings, we do not only to receive love, but to give it as well.
Now, I imagine that many of us in this chapel know what it is to be loved, and we are perhaps so used to the love of our friends and family that we may not take notice of it. But try, if you can, to imagine your life without being loved, or without loving others.
Let me offer an example from my own life….
A few months ago, on November 9th, I celebrated my birthday. Like most of you, I grew up celebrating this day. But I have another special day: November 15th. That is the day that Mari and Bob Cleary adopted me. They gave me my name, took my into their home, they became my mom and dad, and I became their son. I am an only child; medical issues prevented my mom and dad from having children of their own. But there was nothing which could have prevented them from being loving parents….there is no ailment that potent.
I literally would not be who I am today without the choice that they made. I don’t know where I would be if not for the freely-given love of my mother and father.
My parents owed me nothing. I wasn’t born to them; I was not, by nature, their responsibility. No, my mom and dad chose to take me into their lives, and to have their lives turned upside down by parenthood, which is something I’ve found to be an inevitability. They chose to love me, even though it was hard, and they have always loved me, even when it is hard.
So then, how do we know if we are loving one another as we should?
The great writer and Nobel Lauriat Elie Wiesel wrote in his marvelous and tragic memoir Night. that “the opposite of love is not hate…the opposite of love is indifference.”
Wiesel is a Romanian-born Jew, and his statement was made in regards to the time he spent as a teenager in four separate Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. In his assessment, it was not a lack of courage or military might that led to the atrocities of The Holocaust, but rather a lack of love.
As we sit in this Chapel at Wayland Academy in 2012, we are a long way removed from that dark chapter in human history, and as such our circumstances are quite a bit different. But nonetheless, Wiesel’s statement is still profoundly relevant. It is easier for us to be indifferent, toward our roommate who seems overwhelmed with stress, to our classmate who is struggling with difficult material, or to our families back at home….who just plain miss you, and need a good talk once in a while.
It is easier to be indifferent, to write off your roommate’s troubles as their own problem, or to NOT take the time to help a classmate because you have plenty of your own work to do. Or to not call your parents back because you’re just too busy. It is easier to be indifferent. But it is better to love. I challenge each of you, when the time comes, and it will, to love
And I further challenge each of you to stop and recognize all the love that you have been shown throughout your lives. After all, none of us is always easy to love. And I challenge you to recognize the difference that this love has made in your lives. How it has made you who you are, and how it sustains you each day.
We are each better for having been loved, and we can all become better by loving.
