Speaker 1Hello everybody, how you doing? Hope all is well. Welcome to another episode. Today we're talking once again on relationships and love. For those of you in my class, we're going to be looking first at number 52 in our meditation section, and then we're going to be looking at number 5 in our discourse section, which is the piece that you can find on the Book of Life website by the School of Life in Al-Anda Bhutan, and the piece we're examining is Chapter 1, Relationships, Finding Love, and the title of the specific essay is Why, Once You Understand Love, You Could Love Anyone. So what I think this essay offers us, and we'll get to it more in detail in a minute, among other things that we'll discuss, is a general concept of how do we increase our capacity to love? How do we just love, period, right? So the question in our meditations I think is interesting that gets us thinking about this is, what do you spread on this earth? Right, so by that, you know, take it, think about it, and by that I really mean, on a daily basis, how do you move? Do you smile at people? Do you greet people nicely when you see them? When you walk into a place, what type of energy do you bring? Right? And we could, I think, become aware of this when we observe ourselves as we do with these meditation practices and as we should be practicing with philosophy in general, and then we have a great quote from Confucius that I think kind of gives us a great direction that pertains to this essay, of course, right? So Confucius says, that's aspirational, right? A will set on love. So what this essay is asking us to do, I think, in conjunction or in addition to this quote, is think about how we are already expressing love and embodying love in our daily lives, how we could work to love other people, even those who may seem difficult to love, and in addition to that, and he, meaning Alain de Botton of the School of Life, at the end of this essay I think connects it nicely to the idea of loving a significant other, a friend, or a family member, and as well, in that the main virtue I think he's asking us to think about in this essay is empathy, right? So how do we learn to love people who we view as flawed? How do we learn to love ourselves when we confront our own flaws, right? And what he does in this essay, I think very interestingly, is reference Jesus Christ, right? The idea from Jesus Christ, he has a great quote from Thomas Aquinas that I think will give us a good way to start here. He says, Thomas Aquinas defined what Jesus was getting at in this way of talking about love. The person who truly understands love can love anyone. And before that, he goes on and kind of discusses how Jesus would love individuals that society had a tendency to shun, right? And what he was kind of, I think, asking us to consider him being Aquinas, Jesus, right? It's how can we open ourselves up to be more loving individuals, right? How can we, as Confucius is saying, set our will, the way we express ourselves, set our, even our desire towards loving others instead of, let's say, insulting them or hurting them or competing with them, right? And I think Debutant challenges it in a really interesting way. And by it, I mean that social conception of what love is, right? And he says, love is we feel a response to an overt perfection of another person. And he's saying that's problematic. And that's not the only love we should aim for, right? Because of course we have, for this many times, nobody's perfect. Nothing is perfect. Right? So how do we love, although the world is imperfect, how do we love, although we are imperfect, and how do we love others, you know, not so much, let's say, even in spite of their perfections, but with their perfections, seeing that there's something in our imperfections, perhaps, that we can love, right? And he says, at the heart of this is sort of like about Christ-like love, right? Let's say for the sake of this essay, at the heart of this kind of love is an effort to see beyond the outwardly unappealing surface of another human in search of the tender, interesting, scared, and vulnerable person inside. What we know as, quote, the work of love is the emotional, imaginative labor that's required to peer behind an off-putting facade. And it's a great idea, right? That's about going more of an in-depth examination of who somebody is. And I think, again, the greatest pathway to that is dialogue, to get to know someone. And he's giving us another tool here, which is imagination. And we've talked about that a lot in class, right? And this is maybe a little bit tertiary, but I'll hopefully bring it back in. But if you have a positive imagination, your life will likely be more joyful, right? That doesn't mean a naive or, let's say, a delusional or, you know, a type of imagination where you're just, you know, practicing wishful thinking, where you're not actually taking action in the world to make the world the way you think it should be. But it's something that, as we've said, too, you know, that's something being our imaginations can really torture us. So we torture ourselves, perhaps, by closing ourselves off to because we don't do what Devu Tan is saying. We don't see past even, let's say, an episodic behavior or someone's rude. A stranger, right, might be rude in a store, or they might, again, cut us off in traffic. And instead of extending with our imaginations a sense of empathy, or instead of looking past that one action that may seemingly be negative and granting them, let's say, the benefit of the doubt, or seeing that maybe there's a reason that we can relate to behind this action, we just start casting a negative, let's say, portrayal, or creating a negative portrayal of the person that cut you off, or the person that's being rude in the store. And if you do that habitually, I think it's highly likely that eventually your view of humanity will just be more negative than it has to be, right? You don't want to be misanthropic. That's the opposite of what a Christ-like love, which is what Devu Tan is suggesting here, would suggest we cultivate, right? So we could catch ourselves doing this, right? I think the traffic is always, you know, a good example of this kind of stuff. But he's asking us here to move, beyond our negative assumptions about other people and see that there's a reason or potentially a reason, or see that, as he's saying, I think really nice, right? There's a vulnerability, especially when people are acting angrily, right? Anger is usually like, to me, when you really get angry, you're giving away your ability to be in a better state, right? Because normally wants to be angry. And of course, here we're talking about irrational, unrighteous anger, right? Or let's say you're angry, you're giving away your power away, to craft a state of being that's more beneficial to you and to others, right? Because if you're angry, it's likely that you're not seeing straight. It's likely that you're not thinking through, right? So we can stop that even before it starts by opening ourselves up to what he's saying here and pursuing the type of empathy and the type of imagination that encourages us to, as Confucius said, try to love others versus trying to, trying to, again, or allowing ourselves to, maybe is a better way to put it, look at others in a way that's disparaging or degrading, or we're making the worst possible assumption. That person cut me off because they're rude, or that person cut me off because they're a horrible person, right? Maybe a little bit of imagination. Again, we see them as someone who might be in a rush doing something necessary. You're never going to know anyway. You're not going to catch, hopefully you don't do this, right? You're not going to catch up to them, try to yell at them. And like, and even if you try to yell at them, right, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but you're really not going to catch up to them. Like, hey, why did you do that? It's not going to happen. You're not going to catch up to them. So it's all imaginary. So why not imagine a world where that person is doing something good? You benefit from it. Why? Because you're in a better mood. And also now you're viewing people in a better light and you view people, you are a person, right? So all these things kind of connect, right? If you have a tendency to damn yourself, you also likely have a tendency to damn others. You mess up on the small thing. All of a sudden you think you're a failure. Well, then you're going to hold people to a similar standard. It's like the case, right? You're going to see one person, someone making a mistake. All of a sudden, they're a loser, but we have a tendency to do that. So we see ourselves, we see others, we're woven together, right? So one other quick point on that, I think with the notion of let's say driving and getting cut off or whatever, is that we should make sure we take time to separate the action from the person who did the action, right? Kind of committing ourselves to separating as much as we can, the doer from the deed, right? And of course there are some actions that stand alone as in they're so terrible that we don't really necessarily need to do this, right? Some arguments can certainly be made for specific actions. I'm sure we could all think of a few that are just absolutely horrible where this doesn't really fit. Ultimately though, with small, let's say, quote unquote, small day-to-day stuff, right? Outside of the fact that it may be a habit, we should get good at this. And with ourselves as well, that's a part of loving ourselves. Maybe, right? It's not characterizing ourselves. In this overly negative way based on one occurrence or based on one choice. And we should offer that same type of empathy. Let's even say love to other people as well. We're all messed up. We're all imperfect. We all make mistakes, right? So that's also what I think this essay is getting us to consider. The imperfect nature of the world should not make us afraid to love others and to love ourselves and to love the universe. We should come to terms with that and see that we can love, again, we can love these things. Again, not all things, of course, but we should work to, again, set our will in that direction, right? So a little bit more from the essay here, I think that will highlight these ideas, right? Deboutin commenting on the frustration that can come, once again, with the idea that we don't separate the deed from the doer and then we have a negative view of people. We don't think for a moment imaginatively in a positive way to try to instead of, again, damn somebody and characterize it negatively to empathize. he says this is an interesting example still right we might see a furious person in a restaurant violently complaining that the tomato sauce is on the wrong place on their plate but rather than condemn and feel superior we might try to construct a story of how this individual had come to be so impossible and how powerless they must feel in a world where something and not what they are ostensibly complaining about this really is not the sauce right something else has frustrated them to the core the more energy we expend in thinking like this the more we stand to discover a very surprising truth that we could potentially see the lovable sides of pretty much anyone because we can relate to that hopefully we don't behave like that right but ultimately there's a reason he's frustrated that we might be able to relate to and a part of philosophy too would be that when you're frustrated at the restaurant and you have that inclination to yell or to be difficult you can talk to yourself and okay this is not rational this is not the waiter's fault that i got fired today right it's not the waiter's fault that my friend was just rude to me i'm not going to take it out on this person right and when he follows that point again he's saying here to kind of broaden our understanding of how we can love others how we can empathize i think he strikes a really interesting balance here right that doesn't mean we should give up all criteria when searching for a partner it's a way of saying that the nicest person will even sorry will eventually require us to look at them with imagination as we try to negotiate around some of their gravely dispiriting sides we are too deeply challenging to be around and therefore stand in need of a constantly imaginative tender gaze to rescue us from being dismissed as merely another everyday monster so here he's saying again we're imperfect we want someone to look at us empathetically at times maybe sympathetically we'd want someone to ask us why we just did the thing we did we want someone to give us the benefit of the doubt so we should do the same thing so when we practice this again like anything else we get good at it right so when we practice this again like anything else we get good at it i think also the title of this chapter finding love also connects to this really nicely right if you're someone who's looking for love and again this could be love in a relationship in terms of a significant other this could be love in terms of maybe new friendships or working to create more profound connections with friends or significant others or family members right it's all finding searching let's kind of make that synonymous for a second right i think it's weird to want that while not also trying to create it for others and with others right so you want let's say a loving relationship with a significant other but you don't offer them love bad idea right even if you're let's say again looking for new friends or you're searching for a new relationship you're single right it makes sense to try to i think at least pursue what debutan is suggesting here with empathizing with a stranger at a restaurant right or even with this like this whole essay works really well for if you have a job where and it sometimes can be very difficult right instead of letting yourself go to anger first again in i would say a lot of cases sometimes anger makes sense it's righteous you are right to get angry 100 that happens right but in terms of like small annoyances and again hopefully the day-to-day stuff will fall under that category right instead of going straight to anger or frustration or being let's say combative stopping for a second and maybe asking a well-placed question right or even just smiling and letting people kind of work out what they're doing and how and why they're being irrational this just works for me a few times recently actually right someone's being in my opinion maybe a little bit rude or what have you i don't engage i just sometimes just stand and kind of give them a second to figure it out right i kind of just stand quietly calmly and it works people kind of like you know what they either apologize like you know what um here's what you know i wanted to say and they kind of rework it it's that patience too i think because i'm not trying to assume that everybody is out to be rude to me right that's a very you know unhealthy way to live so instead we try to maybe pursue this try to empathize with other people right even ask somebody this kind of works too i think right like you're having a rough day right or even you know in the kindest way like trying to guide people whereas we had a few episodes ago right teaching and learning is a part of all love relationships so if you want to greet the world in a way that's more loving it might involve being willing to teach people in a kind way and learn from them so you can teach them effectively so somebody offers you some rudeness all right you're learning right this person is rude they're having a rough day right try to go into a zone where you're teaching them instead of fighting with them where you're getting to know them even if it's a short interaction right you're offering them a moment to teach and learn versus a moment to fight be combative or what have you right and in so doing you're just making the world a calmer place and that's a good idea right so again finding love if you try to act on these things right i'm not saying necessarily it's like the law of attraction which i think is a very interesting concept um but you know if you're looking for love to receive love in the world it makes sense in my opinion to try to put it out as much as you can and at least lead with that because now that you do that there's just more of that out there you're more likely to bump into it yourself so i hope this was helpful thank you for listening i'll talk to you soon Thank you.
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