We Have To Live It

"The spiritual life is not a theory - we have to live it.  So we clean house . . . asking each morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness, and love."  P 83 BB.

I searched the Big Book for the word "love" and was astounded how rarely it's mentioned, and usually in non-personal connotations like "loved to drink."

Love: An intense feeling of deep affection.  (Ed. Note: Weak!  Weak!  Weak definition!  Miriam Webster can't even come up with a robust definition for love.)

To continue my amusement of my daily existential battle of Problem V Solution has led me this morning to the idea of what it means to love someone or something.  In my tight-assed, buttoned-down, conservative, Lutheran, German upbringing I was led to believe that love was restricted to god, your family, and a significant other.  I never understood that it was something much larger than that.

I tell the story of a man I was helping out in sincity (and by "helping out" I mean "he was helping me out") who ended a phone call one time with a "Love you, man."  This stopped me in my tracks and frankly offended me a little bit.  He continued to sign off this way, seemingly not offended by my tight-assed silence.  Then one day he didn't say it and - guess what? - that offended me.  You see how it is with me - you're screwed if you do and you're screwed if you don't.  I can find a problem with everything.

I began to toss it out with some of best boyfriends and it felt good to do it and it was usually returned.  I started, from time to time, to sneak up behind one of them as they were waiting for the meeting to start, and gave them a big kiss on the cheek.  I haven't been decked yet.  People that see it usually love it although I did hear one tight-assed guy say: "Well, that was weird."

It has been here in California, only a few years ago, after many years of sobriety, that it occurred to me that there were a handful of women that I loved, too.  One morning before our meeting I was talking to a woman that I know fairly well.  I don't find her that interesting and we have very little in common so our conversations are pretty chit-chatty but she has been important to my sobriety so I said: "You know - I do love you."  She was so obviously tickled shitless about this that it made my day - it made my week.

I'm careful with this word with my girlfriends.  It has a ton of weight behind it and I need for everyone to understand that it comes from a special part of my heart.  I don't want anyone to misunderstand.  The idea of love can be used for selfish reasons.  I get to hear women say it to me, too.  Not a lot of them - this is not something I toss about willy-nilly.  

I have come to believe that love is something with all kinds of different levels and intensities.  I love people differently.  My feelings can ebb and flow but love is love.  There are guys that I have had words with but that I still love.  It doesn't go away - it changes, it metamorphisizes, it migrates.

Don't tell anyone I'm talking like this.  I have a big-city, east-coast, look-of-irritation, sarcastic reputation to uphold.