WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

By

Voyle A. Glover

 

The "whump-whump" of the helicopter above me beat a drum-like sound into my brain as I stared at it. Dust whirled up around me as the blades beat the air to the ground and I watched as a man dangled in a harness from a rope, with a basket dangling from another rope beside him.

On the ground, several officers stood waiting around the blanketed figure lying there so still on that mountainside in Arizona's famed Superstition Mountains. Behind them, the hood of the truck which was now spread in pieces down the mountainside, suddenly lifted up from the ground as though held by an unseen hand, drifted over some fifteen feet and slammed down on top of a woman sitting on a blanket.

She was the wife of the blanketed man about to be lifted up to the helicopter.

No one else saw what happened. The noise was deafening and all eyes were on the helicopter and the descending man and basket. I rushed over and lifted the heavy hood from the woman. Her eye's were wide with fright but there were no discernable injuries.

I leaned over and put my mouth next to her ear: "You all right?" She merely nodded.

It took them another ten minutes to get both of them lifted into the helicopter. It took me and my friend, the son of the man they'd rescued, half a day to get out of the wilderness.

We'd come into the area by "tote-goats" which were little more than motor scooters with large tires, geared way down to take the steep trails of the mountains. We climbed back up the mountain, retrieved our "tote-goats" and rode down the trail in silence. We loaded them into my Bronco I'd left parked in the yard of an old abandoned ranch house. Not a word was spoken. I knew he was upset and deeply troubled.

During the ride back into Phoenix we heard the story on the radio and also heard he'd died. My friend didn't say much.

I got $50.00 from the woman for finding them. (I'd been the first to locate them on the mountainside and to care for them while my friend went for help.) And I never saw much of my friend after that. He went his way and I went mine.

We never knew why his father had chosen to drive into such a remote wilderness area, an area clearly posted against any vehicles. And why he'd decided to risk going down a mountain side road that was narrow and with a nearly forty-five degree incline remained a mystery. She said he'd been drinking and he wanted to get to the bottom of the mountain, in a small valley, because of a map.

Was it gold he sought? I don't know. I only know his quest cost him his life. I know he took some risks that were foolish.

And I know that he laid staring up into the blistering hot sun for three days without food, water or shelter. His wife sat on her blanket, unmoving, refusing to assist him. Perhaps he'd have survived if she'd helped him. Perhaps not. No one will ever know. I do know she'd refused to give him shade or water or any assistance. That was obvious. I don't know why. She had a broken ankle, but she managed to crawl around and retrieve canned fruit and some other things. She managed to get a blanket and some things together for the cold nights.

I don't know why some folks do the things they do.  It is difficult to comprehend someone who can murder another without a qualm. They can see sufferings and it does not move them. They can see death and it does not move them. They can see children, their own, in great need, and be unmoved. Indeed, as we've seen in our recent history, they can even kill their own children.

The human psyche is a complicated thing. But every human being shares certain things in common. We all share, for example, certain emotions. We can become angry. That emotion is common to virtually every normal human being. We can hate. And we can love. We are all born with those emotions. Babies cry from hunger or from fear. A baby can laugh. We don't understand, necessarily why they are laughing, but they laugh. Something they see or hear, or a combination, makes them display an emotion we've come to identify as laughter.

Why then do some humans one day quit laughing? Quit crying? Quit caring? Where do their emotions go? I've often thought about that woman on the mountainside who ignored her husband's deadly plight and who sat unmoved by his pitiful cries for help for three long days and nights. And I've wondered what could have caused her to move from a caring person to a cold hearted, unfeeling person. Was it anger? Did her anger overwhelm her love for him for she was indeed, an angry woman. She'd expressed her anger to us, telling us how she'd begged him not to go down the mountain road. He'd ignored her.

But anger over another's actions which enable us to sit while another human suffers from blinding, blistering heat and pain from broken bones and who lends no comfort nor assistance is rather extreme. Such anger does not come in a day.

I contend that most people lose their humanity one day at a time. It usually does not leave them in an instant (though that is, I believe, possible). I'm convinced that we stop caring for others in little pieces of time. One day we wake up and we find we no longer care. We discover that our feelings for someone has vanished. We hear of their death and are unmoved. Or we hear of someone who is deathly ill and their plight means nothing to us.

It can come that way into a marriage. One day, you find there is nothing there. All feelings are gone. Emptiness sits where once love reigned. Even anger is strangely absent. It's like the sunset that you never saw.

And you wonder why.

May I suggest that every human being is capable of losing this part of his or her humanity. You can lose your feelings for your children, your spouse, your parents, anyone and anything you love can become to you, just names, just things.

How, you ask, is this possible?

Well, many things contribute to someone losing their emotions, especially love. There is such a thing as "natural affection." It is our nature to have affection for certain persons, such as parents or children or siblings. That natural affection is in part, a learned behavior, and in part, something we are given at birth. It is with all normal humans.

We see mothers grieving for their children who died in all cultures, from the most unsophisticated mother whose entire existence has been in a jungle, living in a grass house, to the rich and most sophisticated mother. They weep for their children alike. And those tears are motivated by the same basic emotions found in every mother.

But some mothers don't cry any more. They can't. And some fathers never cry. And they never miss their children. They can abandon them to their mothers and never look back. They never support them and look at "child support" as an onerous decree issued by some despot sitting in a court room. They have lost an important part of their humanity.

They are as calloused as the woman who sat and watched her husband be tortured to death for three days, yet refused to build him a shelter, refused to nurse him and refused to render aid to him. Even so, they refuse to render aid to their own flesh and blood.

I suggest that it began with a single moment of time. And then another moment of time. And another. Until one day there was no natural affection left.

You see, love on a human level is something that must be nurtured. It must be cultivated.

In order for love to grow and to stay healthy, certain things must be done. One must pay attention to the needs of the other. Insensitivity to the needs of a spouse is probably one of the greatest of causes of marital problems. And that insensitivity comes from selfishness.

You see, love is not about feelings. It is not about having warm, fuzzy feelings for someone. It is not about that feeling we call "caring." It is about duty. It is about responsibility. It is about diverting attention from ourselves long enough to consider the needs of another. It is about thinking. It is about considering the plight of another, the circumstances of another.

You see, if we cultivate the natural feelings we have, if we hold duty high, if we hold to the form, if we force ourselves to do kind things and to think kind thoughts, we will preserve that meager flame called "natural affection," and we at least have a chance of blowing the flame into love.

But when we neglect to think about those to whom we have duty, or to those to whom we have a natural affection, and we fail to consider their plight and we fail to divert our attention from ourselves in any meaningful span of time, then the small flame of affection we probably are calling love will begin to dwindle. And one day it will go out. One day it will die.

There are some who would argue that duty and responsibility have nothing to do with nurturing love but I strongly disagree. Duty, responsibility and the performance of good deeds that imply affection are but formative demonstrations best described as acts of kindness which nurture and strengthen one's natural affection and cause it to remain strong. We call it love.

Love comes from doing kind things to another, not feelings.

Love comes from doing one's duty towards another, not feelings.

Love comes from sacrifice of our present needs for another's, not feelings.

Love comes from sincere consideration of the needs of another, not feelings.

Jesus Christ said as much to His disciples when he said: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." John 14:15. In other words, show your love by your obedience. The model was imbedded into Jesus' command.

The form is the master which develops the substance. It is within the form that the substance must grow. Jesus knew His disciples knew little about loving Him. He knew their capacity for loving Him was small.

But there was capacity. He knew that. And He knew that obedience would cause that capacity to enlarge. He knew that the more they conformed their lives to His commands, the more they would understand Him, the more they would be sensitive to Him and His way and His needs. And thus, the more they would love.

Even so, the more we conform our behavior to models of servitude, of kindness and love, the more we will learn about love, the more we will learn how to love and the stronger will be our love. But it takes time. It takes attention. It is like growing a garden. One must water a garden. One must prune and must pull weeds. It is work. But it is a labor of love that has its fruit in its season.

A marriage or a relationship with children or siblings is no different. You may have warm fuzzy feelings about someone but that doesn't mean you love. Are you concerned for their needs? Do you consider their situation? Do you sacrifice your needs for theirs now and then? And do you pay attention to their lives, thinking about them, thinking about their wants, their needs and how you might demonstrate love to them? And then do you act on that?

Some men have difficulty demonstrating love. Men too often restrain themselves from showing affection. But unless and until a man begins to insert himself into models of love, behavior models, and develop patterns in his life which will strengthen his affection for his children or his spouse, he will withdraw and will slowly lose the natural feelings until one day there is nothing or, at best, there is this intellectual assent to love in which he understands and acknowledges that he is supposed to love someone because of the relationship and therefore because there is a relationship, he must love that person, even if there is no feeling.

That is not love.

But that is exactly what many folks have in their marriage.

It doesn't have to be that way. The beginning to love is to recognize responsibility. We have a responsibility to love, particularly those who are family. Once responsibility is recognized, then one must insert him or herself into the model.

What is the model? Simple answer: It is kindness. It is doing kind things, saying kind things, forbearing, biting the tongue with an angry retort, shoving aside our selfishness, our pride and putting someone else up on a pedestal called VIP. Ignore feelings. Just do it. And the more you do it, the more you will kindle that flame of natural affection and strengthen it into genuine love.

One of the reasons men can leave their children without rendering child support is because they have never inserted themselves into the model.

Mother, on the other hand, has held the child. She's been in the model from the beginning. She cradles it. She rocks the child. She feeds the child. She tends to its wants every single day. And love grows. A bond is formed.

The man is at work. He comes home tired and plays with the child, never really tending to its needs, never really sacrificing himself (not even to change the diaper late at night or feed the baby while mom sleeps on).

And there is no real development of the natural affections of the father. If this continues, then there will be an emotional distancing of the father from the child. Both will be losers because neither will have love for the other. Even the natural affection will die and all that will exist is an intellectual assent to the model. 

Such relationships  are being made by the tens of thousands every day in America. Fathers are too busy "making it" to pay attention to the needs of the child (or the mother). And when finally the intellectual assent to the model of love no longer will sustain the marriage, divorce comes with a wicked vengeance.

And father, who never learned to love his child or children, sees a court order to pay child support as a decree to pay money to some woman for whom he once had some affection. He does not see beyond his own selfishness because he never saw beyond that while he was married. He never looked to the needs of the children then and now, it is only a matter of dollars. It is pure economics. There are no natural feelings which would generate a desire to care for the needs of his children.

And so he resists, often to the point of disappearing, refusing to pay even a pittance towards the well being of his children.

He has lost his natural affection.

It is a sign of the times.

It was predicted that there would come a time in the earth when men would lack natural affection. It is written in the Bible, in 2 Timothy 3:1-3: "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2, For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3. Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good...."

Think about it.

The End

Copyright 1997