Lenore resting after her mud bath. Lenore is all about love. Food, too.

July 24, 2009 – The question for me about unconditional love (I suspect I could make a lot of money doing a book about it – never got so much e-mail, cept for Lenore and Brutus) is why would anyone want it?
  I want someone to love me for myself, and for the person I can be, not without condition or work. The idea of love as an unconditional gift is appealing, and I can see why people would want it. But I’m with Socrates. Love is not a gift but a responsibility. It asks something of us, and we have a right to ask something of it.
  I want the person who loves me to think of me, support me, work to understand me and encourage me in the difficult challenges of any life. A life lived in fear and dread is pointless, a life lived without the acknowledgement of both is barren.
  I am in love, and I ask myself every morning, how can I love this person? How can I help her in her life? What can I do for her? Those are conditions. I hope she will demand much of me, and tell me what she needs and challenge me to be the person I want to be. That is a building block of growth and evolution, the stuff of life for me.
  I don’t want her to love me unconditionally, because I exist.  I am not a Hallmark card.
  I want anyone I love and who loves me to have expectations – conditions –  I need to meet.
  Yes, it is different with a child. And yes, it is different with a dog.
  In our time, we have seen the epidemic emotionalizing of animals like dogs, the relentless transformation of them into child-like extensions of our own emotional wants and needs. Nothing has advanced this more than the notion of unconditional love, as if dogs had any choice in the matter. I think the challenge of loving dogs is that when it is pure, we treat them lovingly and well because our kind of love is beyond their consciousness, thus what we do for them is truly generous and loving, even if they can’t reciprocate in the ways we might like.
  Speaking only for me, love, unlike fear, is not an idea. It is a great responsibility. For my sake, I hope it stays highly conditional.