Unconditional love is something mooted and carolled by all kinds of people Brian Cox would call "purveyors of tripe." It's a love with no fixed point, no boundaries, barriers, or special dispensation and as the name suggests, no Terms and Conditions notice pinned to its gates. In the great equation of What Life Is, unconditional love is very important, so here I coin a new term - Unconditionalism.
One who is unconditionalistic has a handle on dealing with love constructively, without judgement or need to alter the one who is loved. An unconditionalist is a rare thing to find, for as a relationship progresses there is the ever-present draw to make it what you want it to be, and when the other party responds in retaliation as they fiercely protect the way they want it to be, the Terms and Conditions notices get waved about and both parties are striking at the paper in a bid to get themselves heard. Eventually everyone forgets what the fight was for in the first place, but there's always a fresh start to fight from and our personal gremlins are not held in abeyance for long before they're at it again, making us think the worst and playing us into the hands of self-created hell. This is a picture of typical human relationships, not of unconditionalism. In an unconditionalistic world, there would be none of these spats, no posturing for territorial rights or fencing for the upper hand. Ideal worlds are part and parcel of the dreams we carry with us through life, and those dreams are no less valuable as we get older, they just appear harder to maintain because life makes us cynical, turns us into social sheep and makes us believe what the papers say ahead of what common sense tells us is important.
One who is unconditionalistic has a handle on dealing with love constructively, without judgement or need to alter the one who is loved. An unconditionalist is a rare thing to find, for as a relationship progresses there is the ever-present draw to make it what you want it to be, and when the other party responds in retaliation as they fiercely protect the way they want it to be, the Terms and Conditions notices get waved about and both parties are striking at the paper in a bid to get themselves heard. Eventually everyone forgets what the fight was for in the first place, but there's always a fresh start to fight from and our personal gremlins are not held in abeyance for long before they're at it again, making us think the worst and playing us into the hands of self-created hell. This is a picture of typical human relationships, not of unconditionalism. In an unconditionalistic world, there would be none of these spats, no posturing for territorial rights or fencing for the upper hand. Ideal worlds are part and parcel of the dreams we carry with us through life, and those dreams are no less valuable as we get older, they just appear harder to maintain because life makes us cynical, turns us into social sheep and makes us believe what the papers say ahead of what common sense tells us is important.
If you love something, the saying goes, set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours, and if it doesn't it never was. Same goes for people, of course, as goes for doves, dreams and ideals. Only if something returns of its own free will can you claim to have its heart, and then only on the condition that you look after it. There's the catch. You can think you love someone unconditionally, but if a love isn't looked after you're not likely to keep it forever, no matter how much you might have believed you could at the start.
So all in all, to get as close to being an Unconditionalist as is possible to get within the conformities of human society, we have to accept the annoying habits other people have in being themselves, and the safest thing we can do is point out what those habits do to us without forcing an issue of change. Turning our idealisms into a fight is like pitching a dove against gladiators. The outcome is certain, but the aftermath is down to the emotion of the people involved, the spectators and the men in the ring. Human relationships would benefit greatly from a less conformist approach to progress, and a healthy draft of unconditionalism. Moving on, control is nothing more than a continuous roll, as its name suggests. Sometimes we feel we have it, sometimes we feel like we don't. A lot of the time, tangled hierarchy takes control right out of our hands and we have no idea when this is the case. So scrabbling for control might be fun in the board room, but it has no place in the bedroom unless power games are part of your mutuality. And when you think you've lost control in doing what you do and being who you are, take comfort in knowing that everybody does this - strength comes not from winning the round, but from taking whatever you need to learn from the process and adding it to your bank of wisdom, where all transactions are safe from predation. Since the best things in life are free, surely our duty to ourselves is to make sure they stay that way?
So all in all, to get as close to being an Unconditionalist as is possible to get within the conformities of human society, we have to accept the annoying habits other people have in being themselves, and the safest thing we can do is point out what those habits do to us without forcing an issue of change. Turning our idealisms into a fight is like pitching a dove against gladiators. The outcome is certain, but the aftermath is down to the emotion of the people involved, the spectators and the men in the ring. Human relationships would benefit greatly from a less conformist approach to progress, and a healthy draft of unconditionalism. Moving on, control is nothing more than a continuous roll, as its name suggests. Sometimes we feel we have it, sometimes we feel like we don't. A lot of the time, tangled hierarchy takes control right out of our hands and we have no idea when this is the case. So scrabbling for control might be fun in the board room, but it has no place in the bedroom unless power games are part of your mutuality. And when you think you've lost control in doing what you do and being who you are, take comfort in knowing that everybody does this - strength comes not from winning the round, but from taking whatever you need to learn from the process and adding it to your bank of wisdom, where all transactions are safe from predation. Since the best things in life are free, surely our duty to ourselves is to make sure they stay that way?
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