IT’S ALL ABOUT LOVE, this post. I DIDN’T MEAN FOR IT TO BE BUT IT IS

February 6, 2022

I meant to write about my four days in Highland Park, TX with people I love; my two daughters, a baby named Charlie, his mom, Pippa, who designs Persian rugs. But I’ve been distracted by a philosopher’s question. 

 

“Can you be commanded to love?” asked the Doctor of Philosophy whose class I am taking. We all know religions do that.

“Impossible,” most of us in the class agreed. But then, we don’t always know everything.

 

SEATAC AIRPORT ~ February 6, 2022

What’s with the guy six people ahead of me in the snaking TSA security line? He’s pulled his mask down below his bearded chin better enabling a friendly shout across the Plexiglas divider to a woman on the other side.

 

Doesn’t he know that the instant he decides to speak, a film of lubricating saliva spreads across his lips, and as those lips part, a liquid film fractures into filaments just waiting for breath? There it is! The exhaled puff of air every word requires. Within seconds, filaments rupture and fly free. Millions of miniscule saliva droplets! P’s and B’s, T’s and D’s fling fluid better than all other letters. He used them generously. “Yeah, Probably!” he shouts while turning my direction to size up the line behind him. “Boy, Did I Tell him!” he said, laughing. I thought to duck but didn’t. My imagination works wonders with images of malicious molecules rising up, dripping down. 

“Jerk.” Only a mother can love a jerk. He’s not my kid.

 

Not my mask, but my black boots came off for screening. I shouldn’t have had to remove them. My age carries the privilege of keeping shoes on. However, my boots sport a small metal brad seemingly designed to set off alarms. “Boots off,” said TSA. I love those boots.

 

“Excuse me, excuse me.” Muttering apologetically, I charged through a crowd of fellow passengers like a linesman after the quarterback. I aimed to reach a particular bin being shoved along a conveyor belt. In a nick of time I tossed boots onto the bin with my coat which was just behind a bin holding my overhead-storage-sized bag, itself in lockstep along the conveyer belt with my carry-on bag bin, which was just behind the one containing my purse which was being sucked through a gateway of grey plastic strips that concealed an X-ray machine meant to make public any secrets held by bags and boxes, coats and carry-ons.

I stopped thinking about the guy spraying saliva droplets. 

 

“Heels on the heels, mam,” said an impatient agent. I straddled space between yellow footprints painted on the scanner floor, legs splayed, arms raised, heart-shaped over my head inside a device designed to cause comic conversation for TSA employees on break. Once freed, I gathered goods from four bins, dodged shoulders of people securing stuff or fetching children from the floor, and with bags, boots, coat, and purse, footed it to a backless bench where I reassemble.  

 

Let me stop right here. I first meant to write about having fun with people I love, but the subject shifted once I took an elevator up (or was it down?), sighed, and settled in an Airline VIP Lounge. What a place. I loved it.

 

Spacious it was, this nearly empty Lounge, this Not Your Typical Crowded Gate C-10 Seating arrangement, not a place I would normally find myself. Sofas, end-tables, and armchairs created a series of separate seating areas; all offered a view of tarmac and runways through floor to ceiling windows. From two rooms with food aplenty, I chose coffee, a muffin, and an overstuffed armchair next to the windowed wall. I was alone. I removed my mask. I had an hour before joining my people, the hoi polloi, down at Gate C-10. I pulled out a book.

 Then, he arrived. No, not the TSA line guy. This man, old enough to have career worries, chose an armchair directly across from me. Did you hear that? Directly across from me. What? Seven, eight feet separated us?

 Look, there were empty seating areas available. But for the chair I was in, every sofa and seat in my grouping was empty. Mister Roommate arrived, placed a small travel bag on the floor, a cup of creamed coffee, and a plate with two hard-boiled eggs, and one bagel on the table next to him, facing me. He removed his mask. Took a sip. Took a bite. Took out his phone. 

“Jerk.”

 Busy he stayed with conversation, consumption of food, and the quaffing of coffee. P’s, D’s, T’s, and B’s flew to the air we shared. Not even the written work of Tracy Kidder could distract me. The man rose, refreshed his coffee, resettled, all the while sending strong statements loaded with consonants my way. In an unhurried manner, I masked, and moved to an empty seating area before moving on to my flight. 

 

I might easily have forgotten these men (and my attitude) had it not been for a philosopher’s question and my recent phone conversation with a friend in Arizona.

 

“So, I’m taking a philosophy class,” I said. “The professor asked, ‘Can one be commanded to love?’”

 “Yes,” he said. “Love is a decision.”

 I resisted my friend’s sterile concept. I like love as feelings I have toward my husband, my kids, friends, toward Noodles the Texas cat, Scooter the Doodle. I say that I love a cello’s sound, and art of certain sorts, and sourdough bread, and early morning hours. I like love as hugs, and sweet regard, pleasure, deep feelings, and contentment. These are not decisions; these are emotional reactions.

 But come on, Barb. You have a M.A. in Theology. Surely, that wasn’t what ancient religions called for when they set forth commandments to love.

 

Sikhism, Buddhism, Islam, Hindu, Christianity, Bahai, polytheism, Judaism; they all call for it. What is this “it” if not a fuzzy feeling? Love God, love your neighbor, love your enemy, love one another, love the stranger, love yourself, love life, live love. If those things can be commanded, it stands to reason one should be able to decide to do it.

 If my Arizona friend is right, that some aspect of love is a decision, I needed a definition that allows reason rather than emotion to rule. And, you know, since I have that expensive Master’s degree, I might as well put it to work.  What sort of love is a decision rather than a fuzzy feeling? I started a little search. The ancient Greeks had a four-part definition of love: friendship, eros, affection, and sacrificial caring. At least three of those categories seem to require cosy feelings, don’t they? Can a cosy feeling be commanded?

Let me carry this idea to the airport; to those two guys—the Infector, and the Intruder. I think not.The Greek doesn’t help me out here. Nor does a modern dictionary. “Love,” says Random House, second edition, is “a profoundly tender affection, 2) a feeling of warm personal attachment.” Those guys at the airport were inconsiderate jerks. “Love the stranger”? I think not; at least not by these definitions.

Then, I remembered a Hebrew word plastered across the office door of one of my seminary professor’s: HESED. He was a character, that brilliant man, a supralapsarian, double-predestinarian Calvinist, but he got love right: Hesed. He called it a beneficial surprise that arrives unexpectedly. It’s complicated, that Hebrew word (חסד), but darn, if it doesn’t allow for love to be decided.

 

Hesed allows for religious and mental health workers, and an Arizona friend to say, this will be good for you; and it will be good for others. Just do it. Hesed is the practice of loyalty, mercy, and responsibility. Hesed as love requires decision. It is no small thing to offer “completely undeserved kindness and generosity.” Hesed is an act.  A difficult one, I would say.

 

That helps. I can still think those guys were jerks, but I could have chosen, decided, to think of them beyond one moment in an airport. Maybe the guy in line was flying to his wife and newborn child. How could he not want to Blast out the news? It would help if I knew more, but an act of love doesn’t require that I do. Maybe he recognized the woman across the Plexiglas as a college friend he hadn’t seen in years! “Oh!” Mask down, without thinking! “Hey, Peggy!” Gotta love that guy’s moment of joy.

 

I haven’t decided yet, how to hand Hesed to the guy in the lounge, but yeah, I get the point.

 

I now have two definitions of love: great feelings and deliberate actions.

“Can we be commanded to love?”

Depends on our definition, doesn’t it?