Love is a Decision, Pt. 2

On Feb. 12 I was thinking about "love is a decision." The topic came up again at lunch yesterday. We were talking about the fact that people continue to change after we have committed to love them, and not always the way we would have them change if we were the Sovereign.

"To love is to love what is," offers a similar perspective. The whole point is that love is more about who WE are than about what the other person is. The capacity to love is an element of character.

I had a huge "Aha!" about this recently. I have been experiencing some moments of irritability that I truly don't feel I can control. Tiredness, pain, nutritional status (maybe), I don't know. I am truly a lover of equanimity and good humor, yet sometimes I cannot control my own grumpiness. This is new, because up until now, I have to admit that most grumpiness on my part has been more or less manipulative.

So what if some of the grump-outs in the lives of my life partners are also involuntary? What if, like me, they would love to be cheerful, but at the moment, they just cannot? OK, and worse yet, what if the reason I have never been able to "love what is" is that until now, I have always been a purposeful grump, which is why I have always assumed the others were as well, which is why I have always been mad about it. This realization was a great bright window to compassion and forgiveness.

It is also a huge energy release, because of course, harboring resentment about such things is very tiring. In this I also experienced the conversion of suffering into compassion. The stories of Buddha and Jesus teach about that redemptive life experience, each in their own way.