Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 14
On the Ability to Love
(page 4)

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Talking about external stuff when you hang out with friends is not a bad thing. I always talk with people about politics, movies, books, etc. When it is not boring, and when there is a real dialog and learning, it can be lovely. Experience show me, however, that a significant number of people use these external talks because they are afraid to experience and express themselves. When you sense this you don’t need to be rude and say “Enough of this intellectual talks. How did you sleep last night?” I try to do it more smoothly. I developed a six sense by which I always perceive when such external talks become sterile or a hiding from being oneself. When I manage to have the courage and interrupt sterile intellectual and petty talks by expressing how I really experience myself — it does wonders. The energy changes dramatically. The colder energy of abstract or petty talks can be replaced with a loving potency quickly — the room is filled with warmth, as people talk about how they rally feel and what is going on with them. The courage to express how I really experience myself, coupled with listening and empathy, enhances the loving connections in particularly with people who need a gentle encouragement to take off their mask. Most of us are deeply eager to express our real self without fears and disguises. It is an art to bring this deep humanity in people into the open; but when it is out the energy of love begins to flow.

On the Giving and Sharing Aspects of Love

Many humanistic thinkers already touched on this subject extensively, and they correctly suggested that giving and sharing is the heart of the art of loving.

Giving has very little to do with material things. The alienated person associates giving with things, thus when such a person want to give he/she buys the loved one things. That remains to be the case as long as the alienated person does not experience a real self and thus is incapable to give the others a real self. Hence buying gifts is the pre-dominated mode of “giving” in this society; it is the norm for alienated relationship in which people relate to each other primary through the media of things. That does not mean that a loving person cannot buy presents, but that for such a person material things are not the prime expression of giving and love.

Giving means giving yourself, who you are to others. In fact giving is the essence of loving. One can love only when one can give the essence of oneself without fears and inhibitions; only when one can give oneself fully can one achieve oneness with others — that is, really experience the loving connection. Giving is endowing your joy, sadness, genuine thoughts, creative ideas, genuine care and concerns for the others — in sum, it is giving to others everything which is really alive and human in you, and doing it without strings attached. Giving is a primary way of life, of loving. To really give we need to free ourselves from the exploitative way living and giving. We need to let go of the needy person in us that is wrapped around the insecurities of the ego. This is so, because giving by the insecure person does not come from the self-love of the grounded person, but from the need to be approved and liked all the time.

When we reach a stage of freedom whereby we overcame the alienation of the crippled person, giving becomes the full expression of our enlivened personality. An enlivened genuine giving is the heart of the act of loving. Giving expresses the love of life that usually produces an enlivened love back. The genuine life in the giver does something to the other person. The giver produces life and genuine feelings in the other person, which are inevitably reflected back to the giver. The giver receives back the genuine love, support, and solidarity of the receiver. If the receiver him/herself is capable of loving and giving, both the giver and the receiver enrich their love of life through the act of giving: they strengthen their inner-self and gain more confident in life, human solidarity, and love.

A genuine giver can also reach people who are afraid of loving; when this happens, he/she triggers a warm candid responses that are not routinely there. I have never seen as of yet that the act of genuine giving has not produced a sincere giving in return, or at least a response of warm appreciation — unless the others are deeply alienated.

We cannot ignore the complex active interaction between loving people where receiving can be as important as giving. In the Eastern traditions the masters and gurus emphasize only giving because they themselves love without expecting love in return. The ability to give is correctly considered by most humanistic traditions to be central for the ability to love. But sometimes the relationships between giving and receiving love is distorted. When my love is specific to another person, it is healthy when both of us are capable of loving, that is, to give and receive love; in this case the receiver is capable of loving the giver back.

The problem is not only that most people have difficulties to give in a loving relationship, but that they also have equal difficulties to receive love. Most people with the market personality or those who are neurotically afraid of loving, have a difficult time to receive warmth, companionship, joy or sadness from the other person — that is, to let the loving energy of the other person seep deeply into their soul. Many people in our society cannot receive a loving energy; they get tense and they often put up defense mechanisms. For example, when someone gives from the heart, many people will respond with a nice humor or a joke because they feel uncomfortable, or they feel too insecure to respond with deep emotional appreciation from the heart. The market personality in particular cannot respond unless the giving involved a material gift. Even then the “thank you” or “oh it is so beautiful” is many times a conditioned “nice” market response while the receiving person does not feel much in his/her heart.

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