Types of love. And more!

I bought a book titled… dammit… it’s something like “The Yin of Tai Chi.” It’s a good read so far, and one of the things that I’ve learned from it is a type of love that I haven’t considered before, and is frightfully amiss in my life. The book refers to two different kinds of love (neither of which is romantic love, interestingly enough). The first is yang love; this is to love someone because of what they are. Ghandi loved Sara and Paul and little Billy because they were human. Yin love, on the other hand, is a mother’s love. It’s loving unconditionally, though perhaps with a bit of sadness in some cases. Yin love loves Sara and Paul and little Billy because they are Sara and Paul and little Billy; even if Sara’s a slut, Paul’s on the sauce, and little Billy sells drugs to his 4th grade classmates. It’s loving them not in spite of their flaws, but because of their flaws; because their flaws are part of what makes them who they are. Again, a certain bit of sadness can accompany that love; but that’s the love the universe (Tao, God, Yahweh, Allah, Abba, Brahma; pick your term) has for us, because it created us. We are it’s children, as are the plants, animals, rocks, mountains, rivers, valleys, etc. Imagine if we all treated each other as family; if we could put away our cynicism, our distrust, our selfishness, our arrogance, and realize that we are no different than anything else around us.

I am gradually becoming a better person; I think. I use my attitude towards my job (namely, towards the customers at my job) as proof of that. I had four people come in two minutes after close (10 PM) tonight, and I stayed in a good mood. Why get angry over that? It wouldn’t have changed anything. So I stayed upbeat and just did other things I had to do while they were eating. (Granted, I got a little irritable when 11:15 rolled around and they were still there. What do you want from me? I say “wannabe” sage…) But I’m slowly, gradually, but I think definitively, becoming more and more the man I want to be. Between taking Tai Chi, and continuing to seek the divine, and meditating, and staying calm, and paying off bills, and trying to live more simply… I’m getting there. The next step is volunteering and helping others. That’s gonna be a hard step for me to take though; I don’t mind change when it happens to me, but initiating change has never been an easy task for me. I do it, mind you… I started taking Tai Chi classes, didn’t I? But it takes me a while to find the courage. But I will. I feel like my feet are finally on the path that I should be walking, and I’m not going to stray (easily) from it again.