The Privilege of Loving

Friendship . . . that's what my friends told me to write about the other night. Very convenient. If you people want me to hand out public compliments you should just ask for that, but I think I can relate some of the things I've read as of late to the topic.

. . . And, what better place to begin the discussion of friendship than the recent theories of a French psychoanalyst?? Yeah, I couldn't think of anywhere better either.

There's a guy named Jacques Lacan. He's the postmodern equivalent to Freud. I must admit all I know of him is what I've read in this 'intro to postmodernism' book, so don't take what I'm about to say as any authoritative interpretation of the guy. Yet, based on the 10 pages of overview I've read on him, I think he's pretty amazing. Here's the gist: Freud attributed all human behavior to innate drives for sex and occasionally other things. . . but generally just sex. Lacan doesn't refute this outright, but instead he says that 'sex' isn't just sex. Freud was just catching on to the nature of human existence. The one thing that Lacan sees uniting all human existence is the condition of incompletion. From infancy we are presented with the condition lack in our being. Hunger and sex are just superficial examples of this which goes much further to the depths of our being. This basically serves as the constant innate drive of all human activity. We spend our whole lives in the futile quest to become whole.

But, let's rewind the historical-philosophical clock a bit to my old friend Martin Buber. Recall Buber's 'I & Thou' concept. In this we are in a constant cycle of living in the relational world of presence, or the materialized world of objects. We are, moment by moment, presented with a choice between living relationally to the present-ness of our experience or to reduce it to a formula of limited objects controlled by causality. So, in the instance of other people, we must choose to treat them as an unlimited person who lives in the free realm of possibility or as a 'man' or 'woman' confined by the adjectives that we would use like mathematic formula which if used with precision could recreate this same being. The problem with the reductive attitude is that there is nothing that prevents it from eventually applying to us. In as far as we reduce others, we will all too soon find ourselves reduced. This brings us back to Lacan.

Lacan sees most if not all human drives as attempts at finding Wholeness, but our means of finding wholeness are essentially destructive. Consider girls who get depressed at a break-up and go eat a pint of ice-cream. This can be interpreted as an experience where a lack of wholeness (relationally) drives them to seek wholeness through consumption. The problem is that as the body digests the ice-cream the condition of wholeness doesn't last. Lacan points out that this is the same in relationships. In our drive to find wholeness we too often reduce the other person to "be our missing piece". They no longer exist as an unlimited being, but only as a cog to fill our own emptiness. Whether friend or spouse, this is the ugly tendency from which we all suffer.

And, let's make this a little more complicated. Lacan points out that part of our condition of 'lack' is that we are incapable of fully experiencing ourselves. Our knowledge of ourself is incomplete. We sense that we are lacking in areas and complete in other areas, but we can never fully perceive our own self to know our own condition fully. Lacan claims that in the interaction of people we are in the process of knowing and being known. We are interpreting the other person and subtly receiving from them the interpretation of ourself. In all conversation we look to the other person as a mirror by which to understand ourself.

Why do we fear so much being misunderstood? Why can a bad look from another person so thoroughly effect us? Why do we care so often about the vague first impressions of strangers and loose aquaintances?

The answer can be seen in the fact that the other person has a say in our own self-understanding. The stranger who doesn't like me, tell me that there are things about myself that are not likable, or even worse that my self IS in essence not likable. Their interpretation of me can change my interpretation of myself. In Buber's terms, the person who reduces me to a mere object, even more to a worthless object, forces me into the risk of understanding myself that way. On the other end, like we said before, we can reduce everyone we come across to a mirror by which to build our own self up. We can keep around us only the mirrors that show us flattering reflections of ourselves. In fact this what we all have a tendency to do. Yet, in doing so we are not challenged, and ultimately fail to know the other. Ultimately, in this we don't even know ourself, only the flattering characature we have constructed. In Buber's line of thought we objectify others into mirrors, and in the long run end up objectifying ourself as well.

And, shifting gears into Christian thinking, love is the action of God. I realized the other day that I long reduced love to a sort of positive affirmation of other people. Love (in this sense) was a tool, a treat, by which to manipulate other people. Yet, how much more is love, than flattery? Love is not just providing the other with a positive reflection, which by what I've said so far is little more than a positive-objectification of them. Who cares if they feel good about themselves yet walk away less human, less alive than before? Love is not a potential action at my disposal. It is much more than that. It is a privilege.

Love is, as Buber would point toward, a full existing in the presence of another. It is not an attempt to airbrush their reflection, whether that be to bring out the good or the bad. Love is honest. It portrays the other as they are, not better and not worse. Yet love is more than a matter of portrayal. Love exists in that regardless of portrayal love remains with the other. Love stays present with the other, not letting them believe they are something they are not, and not abandoning them for what they are. This is the greatest understanding I have known of love.

In my parents and in my friends alone have I ever felt the reality of love. I can't count the times or ways in which I have been guilty of reduction, trying to make them into mirrors by which to flatter myself, and all the time knowing how false the image I have seen in this truly is. Human love is always fleeting. This is our condition: we are all seeking to be whole, and even in our greatest seasons only manage to live in loves fullness briefly. Yet, in the moments where I have awoken from my delusions of 'being a pretty good guy' and seen myself as I am, I occasionally see my friends for what they are as well. These are the times where I realize that none of us can make each other whole, BUT that we will never be whole without each other's presence. All of us gathering together imperfected, and crying out with needs that none of the others present ever fully understand. Yet, we stay there together, waiting for the terror of the other's honest reflection of ourself to subside as they don't abandon us for what they see . . . even when we would abandon ourselves if not for their better example of how to love. Their love teaches me to love myself, and I've found that this self-love is perhaps the hardest lesson we all have to learn.

I'm convinced that true love is beyond mere lies to comfort the other who has painted their own image as something loveable. It is honest, though biased, reflection always followed by the unnatural action of remaining. It is something that only comes from God who IS Wholeness. YHWH alone is the precedent for this action, and in this we find the greatest privilege of being human: acting as God. Acting out in the same actions as the one who is always aware of our lack and the pathetic and horrible actions that this leads to, yet he always faithfully and graciously remains present to us.