I am writing this whilst listening to the final act of La Traviata, one of Verdi’s finest works and ostensibly an opera all about love. The final act always brings me to tears (much to the embarrassment of my family!), Violetta’s final note before she dies always touches my heart and soul and creates a very confusing but warm and fulfilling emotion in me.
What is the point of all this I hear you all cry in desperation? Well, as I have said before, if you will indulge me, I will explain…
I am having a spurt of energy in and around my therapy room currently. Training notes and materials, some of which haven’t been touched for twenty years or so are being reorganised and put into files for the first time so I know where they are and can access them easier. I am also scanning them and trying to mark those of particular interest or those that may be useful in my future training endeavours.
It was whilst going through some stuff I bought back from the rehab I worked in in Thailand that I found something that caught my eye. The title of the document is ‘Relationships, Love, Sex and Recovery….’ Which rather bought to mind a title for a Jilly Cooper novel rather than something for people in recovery. No matter, I scanned the front page of it and saw a sub heading ‘What is LOVE?’, underneath this was a hint (!) – Love is the attachment that results from deeply appreciating another… It is a CHOICE, NOT a feeling! – This immediately struck a chord in me as is holds a very important truth about the way we experience and hold love for one another.
Ten years ago, my wife gave me a clear choice, love me and my son or bugger off! I took this very seriously and gave myself time to think things through. I am very grateful that I was given the opportunity to make the choice by my wife, and also glad I made the choice to both give and receive their love.
In my 20’s I had been offered love and made very different choices and I rejected the love I was offered forcefully. In my 30’s I went to the other extreme and offered my love to people who were not in a position to receive it and I was the one who was rejected with equal force and with equally devastating effect.
So, that choice my wife offered me was not straightforward. I had to take a risk and a leap of faith, which is probably more dramatic than it sounds. I knew I could trust my wife and I also knew my stepson would do nothing but love me and add to my life. The only conflict in me was whether I was deserving of this love from them. Luckily, I had enough personal therapy under my belt to really understand this conflict and I decided to really give life a full go! I have never regretted my decision and am daily grateful for their love and never complacent around it.
If I had made a different choice ten years ago, I would be in a very different place now, both physically and emotionally. I might have embraced the bachelor life I was living and had lots of ‘fun’, but I would be emotionally and spiritually empty. In short, I made a good choice.
It is really important in the wider world at the moment to recognise that we can also choose to love all other people in the world. We can choose to love our near neighbours, people in different countries, people of different colours, religions, social groups, genders, sexualities. It is a simple binary choice to love other people or not. We don’t need to understand them to love them. We can choose to accept difference in others and not fear it.
It is the same with hate. Hate is a choice; we can hate people we don’t know or understand. We can hate people for being born in a different country, but who want to have a better life in a different country. We can hate people of different genders or sexualities, or we can choose not to. We can dislike, judge and hate people of different colours and or religions, or we can choose not to.
Love and hate are clear binary choices. We can be like Trump, Musk, Farage, Yaxley-Lennon and hate people just for being different, or we can choose to love other people as they are.
Over the years I have always challenged my step son whenever he has said he hates anything! I am sure this has been really irritating for him and confusing for him, but I always followed this up with two points. The first, hating anything is a waste of energy that could be used to better effect and secondly, instead of hating something, seek to understand it so you can help change that thing when you can.
If we can understand why someone is racist, misogynistic, judgemental, angry or any other thing that can influence and exacerbate hatred, then we will be better placed to challenge and encourage that person to think and feel differently.
By hating blindly we become as much a part of the problem as those that are already hateful!
So, I am glad I have chosen love more often than not. I am glad I can consciously choose to love people I don’t even know and reserve judgement on damaged man children like Trump, Musk and Farage. I understand that their hatred comes from their deep-seated insecurities rooted in childhood, so I can be angry with them for making decisions and doing things that harm millions of people, but I will never hate them for it.
If anything I pity them for their weakness, for the child that was abused (in Trump’s case by his father) and also feel sad they didn’t have good people around them as children and latterly as adults, who helped them find peace and happiness.
Instead they have become creatures who will never truly be content. Trump can take over the world and still the wounded child will not feel good enough. That is sad. I cant hate that person. I can pity him and be angry with him at the same time because the choices he is making are impacting billions of people. But a wounded child should not be allowed to have that much power, it is as bad for them as it is for the rest of us! Wounded children make bad choices based on their experiences and should never be enabled in the way Trump and Musk have been. It turns malignant narcissism into sociopathy and that will always end badly.
I would encourage anyone who reads this to open their hearts to the possibility of loving all and everyone on this planet. This does not mean that we have to stand by and let people do bad or harmful things, but we do need to hold that they are a person too and deserve kindness and love, even if their behaviours are abhorrent.
If we meet their hate with hate, the hate will become stronger and we all lose. Meet hate with curiosity, care and a willingness to understand then the hate will dissipate through that process.
Violetta is soon to die. Tuberculosis is killing her and yet she is joyful because her choice of loving Alfredo has paid off. She will die content in his arms, knowing and more importantly feeling that love as she drifts off. I think that this is the best way we can hope our lives to end. Surrounded by those who love us. This will not happen to Trump, or Musk, or anyone like them. They will die alone and scared because of the choices they make. There is no worse consequence to the choices they make in my opinion. I pity them in a way I would never pity Violetta. Violetta chose love, and I adore her for that. I think that is the most important choice any of us can make in our lives and I encourage everyone to give it a chance if they are given the opportunity to do so.