Put a Little Love in Your Heart
And the World Will Be a Better Place
Welcome to the fifth-annual Happy Wanderer Valentine’s Day post! For those who are just joining us, here are links to the previous posts in the series:
The Beast in the Jungle Is Not an Instruction Manual!
Yeesh! Stop Pushing Polyamory on Us Already!
How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Romance
The Case Against (Some!) Rom-Coms
Today I’m trying something new. Our daughter, Casey, once took a college class called Philosophy of Love, whose final project was to create questions about love and then interview three people. Casey interviewed me and has kindly allowed me to share our conversation with you today. Thank you, Casey!
Note: I added the footnotes and links and also edited the interview transcript for length, clarity, and to remove the ums, okays, likes, and most of the sweeties.
As you read, think about how you would respond to Casey’s excellent questions, because you’ll have a chance to comment at the end!
Casey: Hi!
Happy Wanderer: Hi, sweetie pie!
When I say the word “love” what comes to mind?
The first thing I thought of was generosity. Love is wanting to give to other people, sometimes more than you get back. It’s something mutual that you create together with another person. Sometimes you give to them, and other times you rely on them. Here’s an example: I don’t know if you remember, but a couple years ago I dropped you off at Susie’s house, and then I was running to catch the bus, and I fell, and I banged my knees and really scraped myself up. And I had this instant desire to get to Dad. Because I knew he would make me feel better.1 It was totally instinctive.
Also, when you love someone, you’re happy just thinking about them. I’ve been happy all day thinking about this interview we’re doing together.
Aww. So where do you think you learned about love?
Well, I was lucky because I have Grandma and Grandpa for parents, and they were my first introduction to unconditional love. I discovered when I was older that they were also role models for married love. When I was a little kid, Grandpa would come home from work, and he and Grandma would go back to their room, he would get changed out of his work clothes, and they would just talk about their day. And we kids were not allowed to bug them, because that was their special time together. It was really important to our family’s happiness that they made their marriage a priority.
The other person I learned about love from as a child was Mr. Rogers. He has this way of listening to people and giving them attention. I think love is attention—that you see the person as they really are. He had a song with the line, “It’s the people you like the most / who can make you feel maddest.” It was useful for me as a little kid to realize that it’s ok to be angry with people we love, and in fact that it’s because we care so much that we get so mad.
Where do you see love in society?
I probably see love in more places than other people might, because I think it’s love any time a person has an authentic connection with someone—looks them in the eye, really listens to them, shares something personal. Casey, it’s love when you and your brother give money to panhandlers, greet them, pet their dogs, and treat them like people.
Back when I belonged to a gym, there was a man who would sometimes be on the elliptical trainer next to me, and we’d just chit-chat. I never knew his name (he always called me Minnesota), but he shared a lot with me, especially about his son. He was divorced, and he wanted his relationship with his son to continue even though he wasn’t living at home anymore. One day I bumped into him at Trader Joe’s after not having seen him for several months. He told me that our conversations had always meant so much to him. So I think our conversations were love, and his thanking me was love too.
Here’s another example, from a podcast called Heavyweight.2 This guy, Cody’s, mom died when he was sixteen. Cody was in the weight room at school one day, and most people were kind of keeping their distance. I think they didn’t really know what to say. And there was a coach there—it wasn’t even Cody’s coach—and he called Cody out into the hall. Cody thought he was in trouble, but instead the coach said “I’m so sorry about your mom” and then hugged him for a really long time, a really deep, heartfelt hug. And Cody said that it changed his life. He started hugging people more, and he became more open.
And so, in the podcast, Cody asked a friend to help him track the coach down so he could thank him. They found the coach, and he and the coach had a wonderful conversation. Cody told the coach, “You know, I didn’t even know you, but what you did changed the course of my life and made me a better person.” It turned out the coach had just lost his mom when Cody’s mom had died. So he knew what Cody was going through. At the end of their conversation, they told each other that they loved each other. And it was just, like, I’m almost crying even thinking about it now. Love can happen in all kinds of ways, so long as we are willing to connect to another person.
On a more pessimistic note, where do you see an absence of love in society?
This question cracks me up, because it’s so obvious. Social media. The internet. Right? I don’t even necessarily have anything to add, except that any time people divide other human beings into “us and them” it’s an absence of love, and the internet and social media really exacerbate that tendency.
Do you think it’s because the internet prevents people from having those sort of eye-to-eye connections, or because the internet just makes it easier to be cruel anonymously?
I think both. Plus, you get status and prestige for being mean on the internet, and for putting people down. And you don’t necessarily get rewarded for admitting you’re confused, or asking questions, or listening to people.
What differences have you seen in close relationships that did and didn’t work out?
The ones that work out are the ones that have an agreement that you’re going to put each other first, you’re going to build something together, you’re able to laugh at problems, and whatever the conflict is—there will always be conflicts—you are committed to each other.
I think there are a couple of categories for relationships that don’t work out. One is, there are some people who are just too damaged. One of the most terrible things about childhood abuse and trauma is that children who were abused sometimes just aren’t able to be in a relationship as adults. They aren’t able to trust.
On a more banal level, I think our culture really encourages us to put our careers first. And I think a lot of times that gets in the way of relationships. We don’t have time for friends, parents might work so hard that they don’t spend as much time with their kids when their kids might need it, etc. When I was in college and graduate school, so many people broke up at graduation, or somebody got a job, and it was like, “Oh well, this job is so much more important, so, I guess we’re just gonna break up.” It always seemed so senseless to me. It used to be that we only told men that career was more important than relationships, and now we tell everybody that. And I wish we didn’t. I wish we said, “You will be happy if you have a loving family and loving friendships.”
Can you list off the places that you’ve lived?
Minnesota, Chicago, Washington DC, New Jersey, Prague, and Switzerland.
That’s a lot of places! Have you seen significant differences in how people view love in the different places you’ve lived?
My immediate reaction was “Oh, yes, tons of differences!” For example, there are people who express love through compliments, or by criticizing, or by teasing. I have a cute story about that: When Dad and I were dating, his dad, Jerry, was always nice and polite to me. But the day Dad and I got engaged, Jerry teased me and made fun of me.3 And I knew I was in, right? I was truly a member of the family. There are people who express their love through actions rather than through words. There are people who show their love by refusing to say they love you. They love you so much that they’re afraid that they’ll attract the evil eye if they say something nice.
And so, at first I was thinking, “Oh yes, of course there are all these big differences in the way different cultures express love.” But then I realized, no, actually, I think that’s just individuals, and that everybody feels love just as intensely. And, yes, some cultures might be more taciturn or restrained, and some might be more effusive, but you still see praise, you still see criticism and teasing, and hugs, and you still see all of that no matter where you go.
And I think it was the same in the past. It’s tempting to say, “Oh well, people didn’t love their kids as much back then because child mortality.” I think we say that because it’s too terribly painful to think, “All those people whose children died loved their children just as much as we do.” Ben Jonson’s son died when he was six, and Jonson wrote a poem for his epitaph that includes the line,
Rest in soft peace, and, ask’d, say, “Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry.”
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
You read that, and you realize that Jonson was shattered by the death of his son, the same as somebody today would be. And so I think we are all the same underneath.
Well, thank you, that’s all the questions I have.
Sweetie, I am so proud of you for this project and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
Love you.
And you know what? Last thing: Love you!
How about you, readers? How would you answer Casey’s questions? When is a time that you put a little love in your heart? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
Today’s title comes from the song accompanying the closing credits of the beloved Bill Murray film Scrooged (1988). Enjoy!
This is my husband’s cross to bear. I am an utter klutz, so I fall a lot and have frequent kitchen mishaps—and then Matt is tasked with making me feel better, running out to buy bandages, accompanying me to the ER, or watching the kids while a friend takes me to the ER. You can read about one particularly dramatic crash here.
I’ve linked to the episode so that you all can listen. Please do! It’s only fifteen minutes. I guarantee you will be moved and inspired.
The teasing was totally warranted. We were watching the NBA Finals, it was the fourth quarter, and Michael Jordan was taking a foul shot that could decide whether the Bulls won or lost. I said, “I feel sorry for Michael Jordan. There is so much pressure!” And Jerry looked at me incredulously and said, “You. Feel SORRY. For MICHAEL JORDAN?!”
The Michael Jordan anecdote: I am the same, sports make me squirm sometimes; I frequently feel that it’s too bad in a team sport, that the kicker (who doesn’t seem so much like the other guys, in fact sometimes he’s Australian!) has so much pressure on him. I had a relieving 4 years when our college had the best kicker in the nation, he missed like once … indifferent to college football, unlike the rest of the family, that was one of the only things I could have told you about the team.
Re Mr. Rogers, whom I adored as a child (so much so that I mostly resented the time devoted each episode to the puppet segment, Old World puppetry like that being pretty distant from an American childhood):
I called my close girlfriend yesterday to share medical news of a shared close friend. It was of course a distressing conversation but as if to relieve that, and in recognition of the situation, when we were hanging up she laughingly said, I love you! (Knowing I am never going to be the first mover at so saying; left to me the phrase would pass out of existence.)
I was like, oh no, is it like that? We are so old we must end conversations this way lest it’s the last?? Not yet, I I don’t want it to be that time yet! Let’s say, “I like you.”
She said, how about, I like you just the way you are?
I at once promised to write “I liked her just the way she was” on her Dignity memorial page someday. At least 20 years from now, I said firmly.