unconditional love
I have a need to tell a ‘heart’ story. Personal. If
that
bothers you, don’t read this. You may think that I am a typical
western intellectual; only a smallish part of me is. A more important
part of me is
a native, indigenous person of no particular culture. All indigenous
cultures I know share this way of being. I can only talk about this
part of me by telling little stories.
As you may know, I grew up in Indonesia, in a then very small town. My
father, a doctor, worked in public health we would say now; then it was
called hygiene. Often I went with him and a native doctor to outlying
villages where the two doctors would treat wounds and fevers but always
also talked about boiling water for drinking, washing hands, keep
wounds clean, safe waste disposal. Today those may be small things but
then the little things often had big effects. My mother‚ daughter
of a Mennonite minister, had a college education. In a way both my
parents were fairly typical European intellectuals. We had a thousand
books in the house, western magazines. My father could have been a
concert pianist, we had a ‘tropicalized’ grand piano in the
house. I know my parents were good people. The people of the town as
well as the people of the villages all around knew, or knew of, my
father. It was only years later that I understood that, particularly my
mother, was concerned that I was getting too ‘native.’ Most
of the kids I went to school with were Malay, or Chinese, or mixed;
very few white kids..
We had ‘servants’. I have always put that word in quotes; I
hate what it means, prefer not to use it at all. I know that my parents
were good to them, they had vacations, they were paid well I think,
their health needs were taken care of, they shared our food and we
shared their kind of food. I remember few changes: for fifteen years we
had mostly the same group of people living in the back, families with
children I played with. I still think of them as my other family.
My mother frequently said things like, “if you do so and so I
will love you,” or, “mother won’t love you any more
if you do that.” The idea that ‘love’ was something
that could be given or withheld, depending on what I did, or thought,
or said, confused me. Particularly because I learned as a very young
child that I could go to he back and there would be a lap I could sit
in, a shoulder to cry on. Nobody would make demands on me, nor
withhold the comfort of a warm human touch. Even as a child I knew it
was given naturally, freely; human to human.
When I was eight I ran away from home.The day before, back from school
I went to the river behind our house, sometimes 15 feet or more (5
meters) below the ground, and in the monsoon season sometimes it rose
so high that water flowed into our garden and under the house (carrying
interesting animals!). But that day the river was low, low enough for
the neighbor’s elephants to be brought over to wash and play in
the water. There was a path on the edge of the river, and it happened
that behind our house was the steep, stepped, path down to the river. I
had seen the elephants before, of course, and knew the mahout, the
young man (he was 14 at the time) who sat just behind the head of the
lead elephant (the oldest female), guiding them. Elephants love
water, and the depth was just right so that the two young elephants
could swim and now and then rest with their trunks above the water. The
large adults were very careful to keep an eye on the baby. The mahout
and I had talked about ‘his’ elephants, how they love
water, what they eat, how much he cared for them and they for him. He
told me about the river, and what a wonderful cook his mother was, she
made a certain kind of curry that I had tasted once. At our house we
cooked Indonesian or western food. Later he got the elephants to come
out of the water, shake themselves more or less dry. They all headed
for home.
I walked back to our house, deep in thought. The river, elephants,
curry, the animals that washed up when the river was exceptionally
high, weather -- many thoughts. As I walked up the steps into our house
(no doors) my mother, who I had not noticed, spoke up and said in a
harsh tone, “what did you do, what is going on?” Do? I
didn’t ‘do’ anything except watch elephants and talk
to the mahout. But I did not say that. I was not sure how to say all
the things that were in my head, I was still trying to put it all
together. My mother seemed to get upset, “You can
tell me: what did you do, what are you thinking?”
When you are eight years old that kind of question is not answerable. I
kept saying “nothing, I did not do anything, I am just
thinking…”
Mother sent me to my room “until you tell me what you did.”
Later my father came to my room, asking the same question. What did I
do? By that time I was even more confused. My father told me to stay in
my room without supper. I vaguely remember that someone snuck into my
room and gave me some soup and water — not my parents or my
sister.
Maybe I did not sleep much that night. The next morning, very early,
before the sun was up, I walked away. Our house was fairly far from the
main road to town. Unpaved, dusty road, with no houses. I got to the
‘big road’, turned to town. I’m sure I had no plan
where I was going to go, I just walked away. Then I heard our car
behind me. I knew the sound of our car, and at that time of day there
was no other traffic. I looked back, saw that our driver was driving
the car. His name was Udin. He stopped, turned the engine off, got out
of the car, and hunkered down on the grass with his arms wide.
I ran to him, he held me. What is writ large in my memory is that he
did not say anything. He did not ask what I had done, he had no
accusing tone of voice. He said noting, but he held me close. At that
moment I understood something important. I realized that all I needed
was the comfort of his human warmth. To be accepted exactly as I was,
no questions asked.
Later, I learned to call that unconditional
love.
We in the west have all kinds of meanings for the word
‘love’. Being in love, loving something or someone —
or not loving something or
someone. That is not what I mean with unconditional love. To me that is
total, unconditional, acceptance of another just as he or she is. Has
little to do with liking. An acceptance of a common humanity perhaps,
although I can also unconditionally love an animal or a plant. It means
no judgement, no preconceived idea, no prejudice. Westerners have lost
that way of being, I think. We have loaded the word love with so many
conditions that it has become fairly meaningless.
The other day I heard a short lecture by Karen Armstrong, a famous
woman who studied ‘religion’, all religions. She has
written a number of excellent, often scholarly books about many of the
world’s religions but in this talk she pleads with an appealing
urgency for the recovery of what has been called The Golden Rule.
“Do unto others as you would to be done by.” There are
endless variations of that concept. She stresses that every single
religion has that idea at its core. I believe that also. In fact, I
feel as strongly as she that this is the only thing that can save us,
our species. We must learn again what Man has always known, that to
live with each other we must accept each other, unconditionally.
(Her talk is worth watching; 21 minutes ---
<http://www.ted.com/talks/karen_armstrong_let_s_revive_the_golden_rule.html>
)
I know that I have been blessed to learn this so early in life. It has
always worked for me. I have found it everywhere -- no, that is not
true. I have found it everywhere where people were poor, simple,
indigenous, aboriginal, of an ancient culture; not in board rooms or
among the rich or the super educated.
There was a time when I traveled all over the world. Once I had a
fairly long stop-over in Calcutta, now Kolkata. That city was known to
have very poor people. Yes, I always sought out people who lived at the
bottom of the heap. Took a bus to town, walked around. Yes, beggars,
lepers, obviously poor people thronging the streets. I followed my nose
that had discovered a delicious smell. An old woman was selling some
pastries that looked and smelled wonderful. I did not have any local
money, at the airport I had been able to pay for a bus pass with
dollars. Now, on the street, I reached into my pocket, found a dollar
bill, held it out to the woman. She pushed my hand away, did not accept
the dollar, but not before closing my hand around one of those curried
breads, then bent over and touched my hand with her forehead. A man
gently touched me on the shoulder. “That means she is giving you
a blessing,” he said softly. I asked him, “how can I give
her a blessing?” He smiled, “eat the bread.” Both the
woman and the man watched me as I slowly savored every last bite of a
truly fragrant, crisp little roll. Neither the woman nor the man would
accept my dollar but I knew that what we had shared cannot be bought
with dollars. A Persian man taught me that accepting a gift graciously
can be as good as, or better than giving.
In the war I had a girl friend whose parents had what she called
‘an old-fashioned Jewish household’. I asked what that
meant. She laughed, “we always set the table with one more plate
than there are people; for the unexpected guest.” I have been in
Muslim households where they did the same.
When I finished high school I wanted to study medicine in Indonesia --
the only country I really knew. There was a very good university, but
my mother insisted that I must go to Europe ‘to get
culture’ by which she meant concerts, musea, books. In short,
Civilization. It never quite worked that way. I found out soon enough
that what culture I had felt a lot warmer and more comfortable than the
rich but somehow artificial art and music that I was supposed to make
my own. I do not relate well to art that is so huge that it can only be
admired in a public building or a museum. I like art that can be
outside, that blends with the plants and trees. I like music that comes
from the heart rather than the brain. I can appreciate the virtuoso in
art or music, but it does not speak to me. I entered university,
studied medicine. My parents and my sister were still in Indonesia. My
father sent me a generous amount of money each month. The war started
officially two weeks after I arrived in the Netherlands. It was seven
months later that the country was invaded, overrun, occupied. For a few
years my monthly support check arrived. Until the early days of 1942
when the Japanese occupied Indonesia. From one day to the next my
source of income dried up, I had to find a way to support myself. I had
no skills, no experience. My first thought was that whatever it was I
could find to do had to be something with plants or animals. I went to
the poorest part of the city. Walked into a florist. In the Netherlands
everyone has flowers in the house, a blooming plant in winter, and cut
flowers the rest of the year. This was a very small shop, catering to
poor people. The owner, a rail thin man of perhaps 40, asked me what he
could do for me. I need a job, I told him, briefly explained my
situation. Okay, he said, I’ll teach you, and pay you enough to
live on and go to school,. That was my first job. I learned enormously
from him, about plants, flowers, but also about how to live a good life
without much money. He invited me for dinner that first day. I met his
wife and three children. Wonderful, warm friends -- total strangers
only an hour earlier.
Many years later. In an open boat a six hour trip to a small island,
population fifteen souls, as we say. An old man, an older woman, a few
children of many ages, adults. What grew on that atoll was palm trees
and some sweet potato; the ground pure sand. The four of us that came
in the boat were feasted with a party on the beach. We had brought
large water melons, they provided I have forgotten how many different
kinds of fish, crabs, shrimp, sea cucumber (a rubbery taste, salty),
and of course coconut milk, coconut water, shredded and crisped coconut
meat. When we were all full to bursting I asked the people of the
island what they were going to eat tomorrow. They burst out in loud
laughter that turned into singing and then dancing. It got too late for
us to return, so we made ourselves comfortable in the soft sand (NOT
under a coconut tree, of course!). The next morning, we all bathed in
the lagoon (salt water) and drank coconut water. I asked again,
“and what will you eat the rest of the day?” Again they
laughed, and said they would fish, as usual. But having guests was such
a treat that they would be content to eat nothing for a week for having
guests like us. “Come back, come back,” they called after
us, when we left.
And here another story about another island I
visited.
Now almost fifty years ago we moved to Hawai’i. I had a new job
-- a ‘position’ -- professor of Public Health. We lived on
the other side of the island, I commuted on the most beautiful road in
the world, in long curves up a steep mountain, through a short tunnel,
down to the University. At first it took 20 minutes, now it probably
takes double that. I often gave a ride to hitchhikers. One of them a
young man who told me the short version of why he was now at one of the
military bases on the island. He had volunteered for the army when he
was barely old enough, to escape from an abusive father who used
to slam him against the walls of their ‘trailer’ when he
was drunk. The boy was sent to VietNam. He described himself as
‘neutral’ but he did what he was told to do. Until one day
he had come across a little girl with a bleeding forehead, a shrapnel
wound. He had taken her to the army doctor, but had been rudely shooed
away: they only treated soldiers, not civilians. He told me he had
thought about that for days, nights. Finally he had gone to his
commanding officer and handed him his rifle. “Here, you can have
it, I’m not going to shoot any more.” The officer tried to
argue, got very mad. The officer asked what craziness had fallen on
this soldier who did not want to be a soldier any more. The boy said he
had thought about it deeply and decided that killing or shooting at
unarmed children was obscene. The officer jumped out of his chair
and yelled “f..cking is obscene.” The boy said in a flat
voice, “I just walked away. Now they are going to court martial
me.”
--------------------------------------
Last night had two dreams that I felt were ‘important’.
They were not pleasant dreams because they seemed to put a mirror in
front of my face, stories to illustrate that I am not practicing what I
preach. The first dream began with a work project that I was doing -- I
don’t remember what it was we were doing, but it was hard work.
There were four of us, silently lifting and moving things. Two of them
were perhaps two of my sons, the other a young man my sons’ age
group. After we finished whatever it was we were doing we silently
dispersed, but not before the ‘other young man’ had softly
asked me to help him with a clean-up job he had to do yet. I agreed,
and we walked over to the restaurant he had to clean. It was now after
midnight in the dream, a generous moon, but dark. The restaurant, it
turned out, was a cave high in a sheer cliff. I recognized the place
because in a dream long ago I had done the rock climbing that was
required to reach the restaurant on foot. The cliff was almost
vertical, with a path fairly well marked but minimal in places, with
copper-colored hooks to hold on while a foot would search for a slight
hump to stand on. There was another entrance to the cave, of course, a
tunnel for cars, but to reach the tunnel we would have to walk quite a
distance on top of the cliff. To my own surprise I said very firmly
that I refused to walk the difficult path. I knew I had done it once
before, that I had made it, but that in places it was difficult and
felt dangerous. The young man did not argue, but set out by himself
across the cliff face. I woke up, dismayed, confused. Why had I refused
to help the young man who had helped us? An inner voice whispered
excuses, at my age, it is
too late in the night, you are tired. Yes, but still I felt
ashamed.
Fell asleep again and very early morning had another vivid dream. I was
in a room with quite a few others, working on computers. We were all
busy doing our own thing. There was a haze in the room, a sort of cloud
that got thicker as we worked. Occasionally we would talk a few words,
but the work was interesting. We knew each other well, had worked
together for a while. The cloud got thicker and smelled. No, I did not
‘smell’ anything in the dream, but I knew--perhaps someone
had said it--that it was pollution. One man, perhaps the boss, turned a
fan on and did something on his computer that moved the cloud away. We
asked him what he had programmed, we all joined to talk, talked about
what had been done to control the fan and perhaps did other things to
remove the cloud. When we went back to work, the fan softly purring, a
voice came from a far corner that sounded like a kind of droning at
first and then I recognized as a prayer. I did not hear the words but
perhaps, probably, vaguely recognized the religion in which such
droning prayers fitted. Then a man’s voice closer by carried on
with another long prayer that I could identif -- again, not by the
words so much as by the repetition of certain phrases. The voice was
not strong, tentative, hesitant almost. It irritated me. For some
reason I felt it was ‘inappropriate’ to say a prayer of
thanks when a computer and a fan had removed a bad cloud. I woke up,
ashamed of my reaction. My first thought was, two dreams, one after the other, to tell
me that I should be ashamed of myself.
All day the dreams and my feelings about myself went through my
head. What was it the dreams said to me? How could, or should, I
change my attitude?
Slowly, gradually, late afternoon, some other thoughts came into my
head. With a flash the memory of running away from home came back, and
Udin’s arms around me. Not saying a word. The old woman in
Kolkata, a gesture but not a word. And I thought, as I do frequently,
of the Sng’oi, the aboriginal people I got to know in Malaysia.
The first time I met them we had no words, no common language, but
something communicated. In my book I write "I fell in love with these
people." Very awkward choice of words. Ten years later came across a
book, The Tree Where Man was Born
by Peter Matthiessen, famed travel writer. In a few paragraphs he tells
of an encounter with five 'pygmies' (aboriginal people) in East Central
Arica. The five hunteres, "much smaller than their bows" smile.
Matthiessen writes "my smile seems to travel right around my head. The
encounter in the sunny wood is much too simple, too beautiful to be
real, yet it is more real than anything i have known in a long time. I
feel a warm flood of relief, as if I had been away all my life and had
come home again." That is what I felt when I first met the Sng'oi. We
had no words, but I had come home again. I accepted them totally as
they were, and they accepted me. We talked in smiles, later in touch.
Much later we found some words, a few words of Malay that they
understood and a few words of their language I began to know. But
always the real compassion -- literally feeling with -- is wordless.
Now I understand the dreams differently. It was all right for me to not
make that difficult crossing to help the young man who had helped us.
He did not express any disappointment. He accepted without a word; went
on his way. And I have the right to be tired, to be cautious, to be who
I am. As others have the right to express their gratitude in prayers if
that is who they are. I did not sense a real commitment in the man who
went on and on repeating names of God perhaps. But who am I to judge
another’s sincerity. That was his way; I have other ways.
For me words are often a barrier. Touch, a look, communicate better for
me than words. Others may feel more comfortable expressing feelings in
words, or in prayer, even the frequent use of an automatic phrase, like
Inshallah, although, I must
admit, that often it is quite clear whether it is meant as a casual God
willing, as we might say, or a deeply devout ‘if it is the Will
of God’.
Of course I know that people from other cultures have other customs.
Our western world has become a mishmash of cultures, thickly overlaid
with the culture of entertainment and a culture of the Media that has
decided that ‘news’ must be given in tiny bytes, dressed in
personality, tightly packed between advertising that has become
propaganda.
The language of words gets in the way. We have forgotten other
languages that communicate.
Probably that is also why I find our modern way to communicate strange
and difficult: through little gadgets that are telephone and camera and
computer, or through ‘social networks’ where we can write
to a million strangers in 140 abbreviated words.
I need to see, to touch, to feel something beyond words — or before words. My age of course; I
don’t belong in this artificial, wordy world…
-----------------------------------
So many words to communicate such a simple, such a basic human quality!
Accept as you would want to be
accepted
Respect as you would want to be respected
Love as you would want to be loved.
robert wolff, 21 february 2010