“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger In A Strange Land
Loving others while living conscious of Heartspace gives us the opportunity to love ourselves more. What is it that makes love so powerful?
Love in your life is like a DNA strand, looping across the inside of a globe, dozens of ribbons twisting from one side to another. Each point where they entwine represents a sustained connection in our life. Each of these sustained connections is love. The globe is actually a sphere made of triangles, ala Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic spheres.
As we trace along one of these DNA strands as it twists, we discover many different connections. You can name this strand anything you’re deeply connected to within yourself, be it bicycle riding or poetry or house cleaning. You do these things for yourself, and nobody else compels you.
Now find another strand to follow. Notice it’s unique intricacies, the details and knobs that make it it’s own topic. This time you’ll see the this strand represents the connections you maintain to the world around you. You’ll see family and friends, places and experiences go whizzing by.
Then I am reminded of the words of a 20th century German poet named Rilke, who wrote,
“We know little, but that we must hold to what is difficult is a certainty that will not forsake us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it. To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Suddenly, Rilke’s words show how all our connections to others gain context as well as purpose, especially when they are done through love. We can begin to see how love strengthens our Heartspace—The Engine of Engagement. I have wrestled with love, as familial and friendly love has often felt compromised and challenging. I have struggled through agape, that universal love Dr. King spoke so eloquently said is, “understanding, creative, redemptive good will for all men,” and still seek to understand it in my life and throughout the world. None of this says anything for romantic love, which while some experience as bosh, others find deeply rewarding, a roadway to understanding the Universe completely.
All this is to say that Heartspace is strengthened through love of all kinds. Your friends, your world, and your lovers do nothing but connect you more sustainably within yourself and the world around you. Any kind of love does this, too. This is not to make parasitic or anemic love acceptable, but to show that even their apparently ugly, senseless mutations are purposeful in this world. This meaningfulness occurs whether you are conscious of it or not, because there is nothing outside Heartspace. Everything that exists relies on sustainable connections, and those are only forged in the steely furnaces of engagement, and that is Heartspace.
Relax into loving others, and know that you will only gain no matter what the circumstance. This is Heartspace.
Adam F.C. Fletcher 