I Love You

I Love You (1,135)

May 3rd, 2011

It is so much easier to be around human beings when you’re willing to admit that you just happen to be one. And the best way to admit that you’re a part of the species is to actually understand who you are without trying to cover up your nakedness with a bunch of fig leaves.

Because all human beings require, admire and desire. And pretty universally, this ends up being requiring attention, admiring success and desiring thing to be easy.

It is the mechanics of what we have dubbed The Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The reason most people find The Golden Rule virtually impossible to apply is that they are unwilling to admit their own personal package of humanity. They teeter somewhere between the divine and the jungle—never quite willing to admit that we, as a people, occupy both roles. So they religiously climb the mountain toward God, where they grunt and growl their complaints to the heavens. Futility.

But here is it actually works: if I am willing to give people the attention they require, encourage their success and make their lives a little easier, they start feeling like they agree with me more. And when they agree with me more, we find ourselves together—in even greater agreement. And once we join in the prayer of agreement, we start looking prettier to each other. After all, you can work on looking beautiful if you want to, but then someone will find they don’t agree with you, and eventually you will appear uglier. Or you can try to make yourself so agreeable that you become wishy-washy, and then someone will pick at you because you’re not very pretty or you haven’t given them enough attention, success or eased up on them. It’s best to begin with your own humanity: I require attention, I admire success and I desire ease.

Once you accept that in yourself, you can chuckle under your breath and realize that the next Joe and Jane you meet probably have similar demands. You know what happens? It’s a lot easier to love them. For instance, it would be impossible for God to love the world if He thought we were anything other than humans. Yet religion keeps laying the same old brick and mortar: us trying to become more spiritual and divine so that we’ll be pleasing to His Highness. The Bible says the God “knew us from our womb.” So He’s probably fully aware that we require attention, admire success and desire to find a way to make it easy.

I can truthfully tell each and every one of you reading this that I love you—and the best way to show that is by giving you the attention you deserve, helping you get success in your life so you don’t feel like a jerk, while simultaneously finding ways to make it fun and easy.

Religion and politics do exactly the opposite. They both take attention away from the individual and place it on some leader. They both preach about how bad the world is, and the need for a savior to rescue us from our dismal condition. And they both believe that it’s going to be hard to put solutions into practice. No wonder everybody walks around with a downcast face, looking like they’re chewing on four bags of marbles.

I learned a long time ago that I’m not pretty—so the chance of people immediately succumbing to my attractiveness with “eye love you” are slim to none. I like to agree with people and I am an agreeable sort, but there are things I won’t compromise, so I can’t always expect to be embraced by the “aye love you” crowd. So I work on the “I for an I.”

You meet me, you got my attention. We spend any time together, I’m going to be your comrade to help you achieve success. And my dear friend, we are not ever going to do anything hard. If it’s hard we’re going to stop and find out why it started getting so nasty. And because I know you need that—based upon my own personal demand—I can love you with all my heart.

To me, any marriage ceremony or seminar that does not include this process is at least optimistic, if not absolutely ridiculous. Because I’m going to love you about as much as you allow me to get attention, become successful and find the easiest way to do things. If you don’t, I don’t care how pretty you are or how much you agree with me. Eventually I will find myself picking at your bones.

Eye love you—it should be in third position, because all of us look more gorgeous after we’ve learned to become more sensitive.

Aye love you—it should come in second position, because we learn to agree when we are confident that the person in front of us is out for our betterment and not just to manipulate us.

I love you is where it should start. When I am not ashamed of my humanity and I allow you to be equally as unashamed, it is a powerful way to live.

You won’t find it in religion. You won’t find it in politics. And you won’t find it even in the education provided by the experts of our day. It is a philosophy of Jesus that has been buried beneath an accumulation of dusty hymn books, old rugged crosses and religious ceremony.

But if you discover this treasure, you have found true gold.