Spit It Right in My Hand Honey
A definition of love you can really hang your hat on is the one where you show a profound concern for the welfare of another without any desire to control that other, be thanked by that other, or enjoy the process at all.Can you identify? Are you a parent?Say you're trying to get a little child dressed. Little kids prefer to stay UNdressed since they like all the possibilities being undressed offers. Trying to get a child dressed is an experiment in reverse psychology - and lacrosse sort of. You have to hide the clothes behind your back, sneak up on the tot just when he's busy doing something else, throw him in the air, quick open the pair of pants and catch him in them. If he sees you coming, guaranteed he'll run in the other direction - laughing. And if you think pants are hard try shoes and socks.And yet we dress them. Every day all over the world grownups are dressing little kids.Every day all over the world too they get to making hideous faces about whatever strange substance they find in their mouths. Chocolate covered cherries, that kind of thing. They get that look. Their eyeballs start to jiggle. When their faces go kind of plaid you know something bad is about to happen. You sidle over, hold out your cupped palm. They open their mouths to reveal a world of hideous goo and because you're a parent you accept the whole mouthful. The kid is happy. It's your problem now and he very well knows it.Does he thank you? No. Have you controlled events? Hardly. Did you enjoy catching the chewed up chocolate, the tuna casserole, the throwup? Of course not. But did you get stretched enough to actually start thinking more of somebody besides your own boring self? Let's hope so. Because if you want to be happy in life you're going to be giving away give the shop again and again, putting the child first, letting her sleep in your bed, standing around at the mall ten years later, holding all the coats.It's what they call Agapic love, the highest kind of all, the one kind that’ll get you into Heaven no questions asked. If you're practicing Agapic love even once a week you're the lucky one, you're aces, kid, your ship came in. It's just that nobody wants to shake your hand.
