I suppose because I am so looking forward to the visit of my son this week the subject of unconditional love has been much on my mind.   As a parent or at least this parent and, I think, most parents, I always wanted my son to know that my love was unconditional.  I could  never understood how some parents could disown their child.  I am also fully aware that parenting is a very frustrating job.  It is frustrating because we parents cannot and should not control our children. That does not, of course, keep most of us from attempting to insure that our children are morally, physically, and academically prepared to have a successful life.   Sadly, this also does not mean that we have figured out what it might mean to have a successful life.  With 70 some percent of the people in the United States unhappy in their jobs, it is difficult to hold on to the illusion that one knows what it means to be a successful work/professional life.  At my age I am acutely aware that it is not about accumulating things, which, as we age, we, hopefully, begin to realize that we need to get rid of.  This parent does not want to leave a lot of “stuff” for my son to have to distribute to others or just get rid of.   Despite this resolve I, however, have a lot of “stuff.”  Stuff seems a terrible burden to place on anyone. Friends who are dealing with the “estate” of their deceased parent(s) frequently remind me of this.   Living Florida, I am surrounded by consignment and thrift shops on every corner, which are full of stuff which parents left for their kids to dispose of.   As we all know, a lot of we old people come to Florida to live out the last days of our journey.

So, if success is not about accumulating money to buy stuff, perhaps it is about being a moral or ethical person.    Perhaps we think in terms of our children being a good person whatever that might mean.   We ask ourselves, what is a moral or ethical person?   A trip to even the local community library can give us access to an endless number of books on the various philosophers, religions, and spiritual leaders who are convinced that they have the answers.   Hobbes tells us we humans are inherently in need of a social contract with an absolute sovereign power.  Rousseau posited that we humans are naturally good.  Others posit that we are naturally sinful and need “saved” from us.    Still others tell us that it is only by following the precepts of a particular religion that we can be acceptable human beings.  There are many more “opinions” about what constitutes various forms of success – financial, emotional, spiritual, professional, and moral. If we have a healthy child how are we to convince him or her that our way of thinking is either the correct or most accurate way of thinking?   After all, we are tempted to think,  our ability to control or guide our child to having the possibility of having a successful life is dependent on convincing them that we know what is best. Yet, barring issues, which adversely affect the ability of the mind of our child to function, they will quickly figure out that we are not nearly as smart or as all-knowing as we would like them to believe.

Our job as parents is basically pretty simple.  We need to do our best to provide the basics such as food, housing and clothing and to assure our child that we love him or her no matter what they do or do not do.  If we have a child with a mental illness or a disease such as addiction, the job gets more difficult.  When the mental illness or the addiction shows up instead of our child it is not easy to love unconditionally.  We might tell our child and even ourselves that “we love the person but not the behavior” but that does not feel or sound like unconditional love to the brain of that child.   We may find that we have to set some boundaries or practice what is euphemistically called “tough love”.   To not do so may get us labeled as co-dependent. To do so may result in further disrespect by our child who, even in the midst of their illness, knows what we are doing.

What does unconditional love look like, smell like, sound like, or feel like?   There are, of course, moments when we “know” that we are both liked and loved by someone. Those moments will not be 100% of the time in any relationship or at least in any relationship which I have known. In fact, I cannot think of any human being, including myself, who I like 100% of the time. I have often “seen” myself behaving in a way which is not attractive or pleasing.  Sometimes, even as a parent of an adult child, I have “heard” saying myself things such as “ You might want to.” which my son or a spouse might hear as “You need to or should …”. I was not fooling anyone.  My son might respond with, “Quit attempting to control me.”   I might respond, “I am not trying to control you.  I just …” Of course, I was trying to guide or control. The motives might have been very laudable, but that does not mean I was being helpful or was even “heard’ as kind. 

Obviously there is a difference between loving unconditionally and the other person feeling loved unconditionally.  There is also a difference between what I intend, between what I want to intend, and what is heard.  I am not always sure that I am as honest with myself as I would like to think that I am.  Sometimes it is only with the passage of time or with seeing my behavior mirrored in the behavior of others than I can “see.”

It is again obvious that I can complicate the simplest of issues.  No wonder I got such good grades in philosophy in college. I can write pages and pages about whether or not I am awake or dreaming even as I type!    Silly, silly me.

I wish I could say to myself with some degree of confidence that I am going to get better today at just showing up and loving myself and others with no expectations; that I am not going to judge, make suggestions, or try to guide those I love to what I think is a healthy place when they are clearly not ready to go there and may or may not need to go there.  The truth is that when someone I love is struggling, I am going to question whether there is something I could say or do which would be more helpful.  I am also, as I am today, going to strive to more quickly notice what I am doing, laugh at myself, and lovingly remind myself that it is their journey which they have to do in their way. If they ask for advice, I will be happy to offer it.  Or not!

I am typing this as I am sitting at the coffee shop where I often go to write before the library opens.  There are a couple of people at the table next to me whose conversations I hear intermittently. One of the men comes across as being so sure that he knows what is right and wrong.  A little earlier there was another person talking to some other people. He also frequently sounded as if he was so sure about what is right and wrong.  I hear him as one of those who does not have to endlessly analyze the simplest issues.   Many times I have envied the person who is so very clear about what is right and wrong; who has a religion or some other very cut and dry system to guide them; whose religion has a clear set of rules which tells them “the truth.”    Yet, I know that I am never going to be one of those persons.  I am not someone who can “just accept” a set of rules, beliefs, guidelines, or limits.  I am always going to be that kid who has to color outside the lines; that kid who takes apart the clock or whatever object just to try to figure out how it works.      I am also going to think about, analyze, and pray about what is the most loving way to act.  I have to accept that I cannot just follow a set of rules no matter who posits them. It is my goal to  respect the same needs/qualities in others – to respect their need to map their own journey in their own way in their own time.

Intimacy “truths”

All of us grow up learning certain “truths” about ourselves, other people and the universe.   Many of these “truths” are adopted when we are very young.  As a child, with our limited experience and the limited development of our brain, we experience and observe from the vantage point of the small world we occupy.  Based on those experiences and observations we  decide “truths” which we may carry and often live by the rest of our lives.  Often,  it does not occur to us to use our adult mind and our scientific abilities to examine these “truths”  If we do, we will find that many of these “truths” are “lies” or, at best, partial truths.

Many of these “truths”  are often  directly related to intimacy.  When we are young we are also necessarily very self-centered.   If something unpleasant happens, we often decide that we caused it. Perhaps one of most common experiences is having a parent who is emotionally or physically unavailable.  From our child perspective the reason is that the we did something to cause that parent to be unavailable or absent.   If  we are lucky we later learn that adults, including parents, have their own issues having nothing to do with us.  We also learn that the peer who is a bully is dealing with their own low self esteem by convincing themselves that they are better or stronger or smarter or in some way superior. Their hope is that “if they are superior then they are worthwhile and will, thus, will be respected."

If not careful we generalize our limited  experiences to include the whole world. If one person or a couple of people have proved untrustworthy then no one is trustworthy. If one person abused us in some way then everyone will abuse us in some way.  Obviously, from an adult, educated perspective this is very poor science.  If we turned in a report to our boss or a research project to someone with a sample size of one, two or even 10, we would be told to redo the experiment because the design was flawed. 

We establish truths about ourselves in the same unscientific way.  Despite the fact that we know, at some level, that all people are humans and, thus, by definition less than perfect, we are often shameful, shocked  or in denial about our own character flaws or defects.  If we cannot be honest with ourselves we cannot love ourselves.  If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot allow others to love us. If we cannot allow others to love us we must justify/try to make sense of our behavior by blaming other people, events or things or by beating up on ourselves.   The more we engage in any of these behaviors the more isolated we feel and, thus, the worse we feel.  Eventually we experience symptoms of this vicious cycle.  Those symptoms might include physical illness, anger, acute depression, numbing ourselves out with alcohol or some other addictive behavior, or running away in some other way.

If we are very lucky we find the courage to ask for help out of this  dark place.  That help, ironically, begins with taking a relationship risk.  This could mean hiring a coach or a therapist, joining a self help group at church or one of the 12 step programs, finding a higher power, or identifying a wise teacher/mentor.

The good news is that we can choose new truths by which to live; truths based upon our adult knowledge of what is safe and possible,

The new truths will allow us the intimacy we crave with ourselves and others.

Jimmy F. Pickett