There’s much talk in spiritual literature about the importance of love and compassion. For oneself as well as for others. I’ve always struggled with love. It wasn’t much discussed in my family, and I never saw a lot of it in my life as a reporter or television producer. I don’t see much of it on the news, which is why I don’t watch much of it. I just didn’t really know what it meant to love someone or how to do it, although I certainly felt it for my daughter and for other people in my life. My life with animals began the process of learning how to love, and then when I met Maria, I began to understand what it was and I began to learn how to do it. I knew little about it.

I am still learning, I’m new at it. When I was in turmoil, unauthentic, I think, it was difficult to give or receive love. As the shrinks said, I was not available. I am working on it.

But how, I asked my friend, do you love someone you are angry with? Someone you don’t love? Don’t like? Someone whose values and behavior troubles you? There are many people I dislike, many things that bother me, lots of things I judge. How does one progress from there? I just was stumped. Am I supposed to suddenly pretend I love people I don’t love? That seemed fake, doomed.

My friend, a spiritual counselor, suggested a different idea. It’s not about what you do with them, she said, it’s about what’s inside of  you. Anger and judgement are corrosive, you think they are aimed at someone else, but it just eats you up. How do you bring love to someone you do not love, someone you are angry at? You let let them be, she said. You don’t argue with them, try and change them, judge them. You simply stand in your own truth.

Thomas Merton said that all love – love of others, love of God – begins with the love of self. Every day, he said, tell yourself that you love yourself 100 times. It will change your life, he said. Only then can you truly love anything else.

Stop speaking critically of people, my friend said. Don’t tell stories that are critical or unkind. It’s a cliche, but a good one – if you don’t have anything good to say about someone, don’t say anything. Everyone feels anger, everyone feels judgement and envy. Just be aware of it, stop talking and thinking about it, it will fade away mostly. Talk about how you feel, what you do, not what other people feel, what other people do. I told her I had learned to do this on the blog. I call it “me talk.”  I only talk about what I feel and I think, I don’t tell other people what to do. I let other people be themselves, and I ask the same of them.  This, to me, is the path to self-determination. My life is not an argument for other people to join.

This seemed an obvious idea to me, but one I had not fully grasped. I got a piece of it, but not all of it. It seemed a big idea also, one I had not quite understood. I don’t need to be loving to people I don’t like, I just need to let them be, to let go. In an important way, that is loving them. I am always struck by how hard it is for some people to let other people be. To make their own decisions and choices. And letting people be, letting go of anger and  resentment is honest. There is no pretending in it.

It struck me, this idea to let them be the people they are, and not to presume I know that they ought to be anything else.

Is anything ever gained by anger and argument? Does it ever accomplish a thing? Politics in Washington is showing us that, perhaps the only silver lining in that toxic cloud. How liberating that would be, to free myself of this ingrained and debilitating habit. I imagine my whole body and soul would respond to letting go of so much rat poison. I like that, I will work on that.  I wonder what I can do with that time and energy and creativity. I can’t wait to find out.