About Love

We all know, and we all indeed do agree about it, that children need love. Any agreement is finished when it comes to applying "love" to concrete circumstances, situations, or actions. Not that long ago, people believed in the saying: spare the rod, spoil the child. Which meant: Loving a child should be practised by beating her or him for the "right" reason. Nowadays, almost everybody who hears this will take it as a blatant attempt to rationalize cruelty. That's how things can change!

There were always people who would never have beaten a child, under no circumstances. People who did (or do) so, certainly did not act out of love. But there are a lot of subtle ways of cruelty; and to confuse them with love tells, among other things, that an adult person is not dealing with what there is. Nowadays we can observe more and more people who demand kinds of thinking, foreseeing, responsibility from children where older generations naturally knew these children to be much too young for such expectations. But "knowing" of course, does not mean what many people may think - it's not just using categories for acting by applying them "correctly" to whatever situation there is. Treating our relatives, friends, or any other human beings is always a matter of relation. To apply a category to any situation means to also decide about "what there is"; but relation is a two way road. With regard to children, who are just in the process of developing capacities, we have to realize what a child already can do instead of having an opinion about what she should be able to do. That goes especially for mental and emotional faculties. Loving here means, trusting: children usually know what's right for them, and they will tell, if not forbidden by adults' ignorant, unattentive behavior.

In present-day societies there is a habit of thinking that leads to just the opposite of love: It is the idea that everybody had to adapt to and identify with societal conditions; she who did so would live in reality, he who did not, wouldn't. Too many parents act upon these prejudices without even being aware of it. It is not love forcing our children to do what we think to be right for them. We may know what they will have to deal with as adults, but we surely can't prepare them for anything by making them obey. When things are not right for them, they are not right. Where they are expected to do these anyway (usually in case of school), they may have to - but they shouldn't be forced into putting a false label onto this action. They will much better be able to do what they have to when they are allowed to express their anger about it and not having to consent. We are not the agents of a system the cruelty of which we may long have forgotten. Sometimes children just can't act according to adults' expectations because these are utterly wrong. As parents, we do have to stand for and behind our children. This is love.

Concerning our relations to other people (and anybody else - animals, plants, Nature in general), love is action, not feeling. That means: the love I feel is my private feeling. The person I love is not responsible for this; not for my love, not for any other of my feelings her actions may indeed cause me to feel. Therefore, it is e.g. not right to demand of the one we love not to act in a way that worries us. We all tend to do so when we see someone putting himself in danger (especially a child). But there are two reasons we could be wrong about this: First, our judgment about danger being involved could be a misjudgment; and, second, the hidden assumption, namely that the person in question is not capable of handling any danger, could be utterly wrong. So by asking the loved one not to do what she's up to because of our worrying, we unconsciously tell her that we neither trust her own judgment nor her capability of dealing with whatever situation she might bring herself into.

There is a third point. No one can learn to handle difficult situations by avoiding them. Asking another one for this kind of avoidance so that we feel better is basically an attempt to make him stop growing, although we certainly do not mean that. Besides, we provoke the other one not to ask for our help in case they really need it. They may look after our feelings, but certainly avoid telling what makes us feel worried.

That way, our feeling of love turns into an action that has nothing to do with love. Loving means accepting. It means, not only but especially when it comes to children, letting the other one grow without interfering with the process. What is really important is our attention to recognize when help is being needed or asked for. Our possible fears are ours to deal with. The only way of loving another one is learning to respect their autonomy.