Decisions, decisions, decisions.

 

Not too long ago, I participated in a brief Facebook discussion of the proposition that “love is a decision.” I don’t remember exactly if a consensus was reached, but the fact that we had the difference of opinion gives me license to present my opinion here.

Many years ago (Sheesh! I’m old enough to say something I remember happened many years ago, and it’s true) the late Fr. John Hart Olson, Rector of Christ Church (Episcopal) in Ontario, CA, told me “love is not a feeling, it is a decision.” When I objected, he gave me a copy of Eric Fromm’s The Art of Loving (1).

[Hear a recording of the Christ Church organ here.]

Jon guided my thinking in many ways, but he seldom gave me a book to read. Most of his guidance came from his matchless sermons or from long, meandering conversations—mostly in the sacristy of Christ Church. He would sit in the sacristy for hours talking with his parishioners, drinking Coke after Coke, after Coke. Jon was as conflicted and difficult and contradictory as any person I’ve ever known. None of that mattered (matters) because his teachings were honest and true. And his love was genuine.

Jon gave me The Art of Loving at a time when I not only considered myself to be unlovable, but was also convinced that I could not love anyone else. It was 1972.

Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision (2).

That paragraph has stuck with me for over 40 years now (it’s the most often-quoted passage from Fromm). Within three years of reading it, I had filed for divorce. It seemed I had decided not to love my wife. That proved to be a ridiculously false assumption. The “feeling” that first brought us together had evaporated (at least on my part), but we cared for each other until the day she died in spite of our wildly divergent life experience after our divorce. I am reminded of our decision to love nearly every day as I manage a trust fund she established—and made me the sole trustee.

Most of the decisions we make to love—Fromm describes many kinds of love, not simply romantic love—do not last a lifetime because we are too often separated from, lose connection with, people we have decided to love. I am happy to report that at least one person (besides members of my family) will read this whom I decided to love sometime around seventh grade. And there are a precious few others who will most likely read this whom I have loved for decades—the quality of the love Jon Olson taught us to strive for is evidenced by my near certainty that at least five people who also sat and talked with him will read this. We are in regular communication, even if it’s only on Facebook.

Choose someone out of the crowd and decide to love them?

I know that, were I in trouble, I could count on any one of them for support, and they on me were they in trouble. The fact is that none of us based our relationships on a “feeling” (that’s not true—my relationship with one of them has included the complication of strong feelings of more than one kind of love). We love each other because at some time between 1967 and 1974 we simply decided it would be so.

And here’s the real joy of those decisions. Because I joined,became a part of an intentional community, that is, one based on our individual decisions to love the other members of the community, I allowed myself to develop abiding friendships. And, I am sure I can say, we still care about each other although no two of us live in the same place. We have married, divorced, found partners and lovers, broken up with those people or lost them through death. We have joined other religious organizations or left religion altogether.  And I could sit down to dinner with my friends and pick up the conversation where we left off. And that conversation would not be wasted on the weather.

I have been deeply in love several times since 1974. I believe that if my partner Jerry had not died in 2003, we would still be together. But none of those relationships has had the “staying power” of the love I have for those whom I have simply “decided” to love. Grant Cardone (of whom know nothing) explained the phenomenon more succinctly than I can.

Love is not a feeling, love is a decision you make and continue to make in order to create an experience that is described as love. Love is an action that if you don’t use you will lose. Love is like any communication, if you never send it out, you won’t get a return. Love is something you do, not something you feel because something happens to you (3).

The decision is made!

I’m at the time in my life when I think about what my situation will be at the end. I don’t want to die alone (I’m not, by the way, planning on that in the immediate future). I hope I can remember when the time comes that, even if no one is beside my bed holding my hand, I am not alone. My family and Mary Kalen, Alison, Susan, Jeffrey, Lydia, and Susan will all be there (and Aaron, and Steuart, and. . . ).
________
(1) ”Sheesh” is a perfectly acceptable word:— interj. “informal  an exclamation of surprise or annoyance”
Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. HarperCollins Publishers. 2009. Web. 14 Aug. 2013.

(2) Fromm, Erich. The Art of Loving. New York: Bantam, 1963. (47)

(3) Cardone, Grant. “Love Is a Decsision.” The Blog. Huffington Post. 02/13/09. Web. 14 Aug. 2013.