Once or twice, you find yourself sitting in the back of a small church, contemplating life in its entirety. You’re completely oblivious of the performance going on around you. Your face says, “ I’m present, I’m listening”, but your train of thought just turned left towards Canada.
And then it hits you. A sudden realization dragging you back from Canada, back to the present.
The fragments of knowledge you previously had suddenly come together into a singular truth. Now you understand.
The day is Valentine’s Day, the year is 2021. I’ve been sitting in this damn chair for the past hour, pretending to ruminate on my talking points for the talk show I was about to be a guest speaker on. The “false prophet” they told them to worry about (me) was about to wow them with metaphors and parables on the topic of Ecstasy — The Ecstacy of Loving God.
The metaphors I had prepared, carefully disguised as Christian lingo was anything but Christian. Pieces of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, as well as New Age teachings on Instagram is really what makes up my Bible. A little Jesus, a little Rumi and a dash of Tame Impala. I draw my guidance from various sources. Everything I say has a triple meaning under — so when I tell them “God”, I really mean “Self”.
I filter and filter to conform to a world not unlike the one George Orwell wrote about in that book, 1984. I do what I must to survive.
Sitting there, staring blankly at the scene, I got a sudden realization. One could call it a divine revelation. But what is divine, really?
What I just discovered is hardly a new truth a lot of people don’t already know. Yet to a slow bloomer like me, it’s exciting, beautiful and new.
Standing before me were 20 young adults who had brought gifts to exchange among themselves. Only those who give would receive. Some gifts were so beautifully wrapped, leaving the recipient in wondrous awe as to what was really on the inside. Others looked shabby in comparison, mainly because some of them had gone out in the nick of time to purchase just about anything, hurriedly costuming it in the usual black nylon.
A gift is a gift nonetheless.
And one by one, they picked their numbers and got presented with a gift by their Valentine.
The singular truth emerged like a pretty lady walking down the stairs in her Bardot dress towards her date.
It didn’t matter what type of gift I got in return, so long as I gave one away
Now there were obvious class differences in this church, a great divide between the rich and the poor that was hardly negligible. The young adult church almost only consisted of young nannies, stewards or distant relatives living with the more privileged family member, who were not really in the best position to buy gifts, for someone else (not to sound classist).
But the children of the privileged who had more love to spare, packaged their love in beautiful wrapping paper and cello tape and gave it away, not consciously paying mind to the quality of love their peers gave back.
The others who were not as privileged gave love still, regardless of what was coming back as each one had no idea what was wrapped.
It’s probably the parents/guardians who deserve the praise for directly or indirectly funding our Love Feast. The teenagers themselves probably did this unconsciously and my divine revelation is but a superfluous assertion.
Yet it makes sense, even now as I remember them walking back to their seats, self-conscious smiles on their faces — how less stressful it is to not expect, but to give and to keep giving, paying zero attention to the wrapping paper their love came in, or if it even came at all.
Now, this is a little different for romantic love. Life is filled with parasites and narcissists alike, who are actively searching for the genuine givers and lovers of the world, to suck them dry. It would be unwise to keep giving energy or love to those type of people. However, romantic love without attachment or dependency, and without the fear/insecurity that influences expectations is one worth waiting for. A mature kind of love. I imagine.
Outside romance and monogamy, it is still entirely possible for us all to be genuine givers, in this world of leveraging relationships for future opportunities, networking and friends-with-benefits.
The fragments of my knowledge came about after reading “The Road Less Traveled” by Scott Peck — an amazing book about love, psychology/psychotherapy, spiritual growth/religion.
I had come to understand the difference between falling in love and genuinely loving someone. For weeks I also wrestled with Scott’s idea that skeptics should remain skeptic about everything, including their skepticism. Faith, or belief in a higher force, was finding its way back into my brain. A higher force that is Love. Or is it Truth? Love and Truth?
This knowledge is broken in fragments still, but today’s serendipitous event compels me to the well-known idea that loving (giving) is the divine purpose to which we’ve all been called, one of the secrets of the deep Universe. It’s serious business.
Jesus had a lot to say about it, Rumi did too, but only today did it click that much to me, the Grinch of Valentine. And the more I think about it, the more I realize there’s no other way we ought to love — without expecting anything in return.
Insert Rumi quote on Love
