{"id":11325,"date":"2024-12-08T20:33:53","date_gmt":"2024-12-08T20:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ecoversities.org\/?p=11325"},"modified":"2024-12-13T19:20:12","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T19:20:12","slug":"how-can-we-really-learn-to-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ecoversities.org\/pt\/how-can-we-really-learn-to-love\/","title":{"rendered":"How Can We Really Learn to Love?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by Katie Wachsberger <\/span>\u0643\u064a\u062a\u064a \u0648\u0627\u0643\u0633\u0628\u0631\u062c\u0631 \u05e7\u05d9\u05d9\u05d8\u05d9 \u05d5\u05e7\u05e1\u05d1\u05e8\u05d2\u05e8<\/b><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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A few months ago someone from one of my social circles in Israel reacted to a message I shared regarding large-scale disregard for Palestinian civilian life in Gaza.<\/span> He wrote, \u201cIsrael is not obligated to do everything in its power to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians. Rather, it is obligated to do everything possible to protect the lives of Israeli civilians, and soldiers, and thus the lives of Palestinians may sometimes be the price of that task.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

This made me wonder: For whom are we responsible? Whom are we morally obligated to protect and care for? And can protection and care really be achieved when they cost the safety or lives of other beings? We live in a world where we are constantly prioritizing the wellbeing of some over others. I wonder if our current moments of deep grief and darkness can teach us to reevaluate our thought patterns of identity, community, and belonging and to accept opportunities to learn what it really means to be human.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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A Different Approach<\/b><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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For the first weeks of the ongoing violence in the Gaza strip I was hosted by Tamera, a research center for peace and intentional community in southern Portugal that supports activists from around the world and promotes ecological and social regenerative practices. Tamera puts a heavy emphasis on the principle of \u201cfree love,\u201d referring to the removal of barriers that prevent us from channeling the energy of love beyond the framework of monogamous relationships. This unconventional approach is the bedrock of the community\u2019s work with activism, justice, and peacebuilding, encouraging us to redefine our relationships with all beings and dynamics around us based on unfettered love, mutual responsibility, and care.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

It is argued at Tamera that we cannot address underlying causes of violence or the inability to peacefully coexist among countries, or even groups of people, before we address the ways in which we interact on a much smaller, interpersonal scale in our lives and relationships. That we cannot imagine a peaceful society when love is so restricted and ingrained in dynamics of hierarchy, power, control, ownership, and the search for safety.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThis focus on challenging monogamous relationships,\u201d explains Hala, a friend from Egypt who had visited Tamera before I did, \u201cseemed strange and removed from the reality of our lives, especially in the MENA region. I don\u2019t feel necessarily compelled to accept this way of life, but the concept underlying this philosophy is powerful; it makes us wonder if the act of preferential love is part of our higher nature or whether it is a weak spot in our culture that limits our ability to be united in action and sentiment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>

When I received the message from my acquaintance about the obligation to prioritize Israeli lives over those of Palestinians, it occurred to me that perhaps this idea of free love challenges our conceptions of safety and obligation. Tamera\u2019s ongoing research about unrestricted love led me to examine assumptions that love can and must be hierarchical. While safety in relationships comes from having expectations met, mutual trust, and being truly seen, it is also rooted in the concept of prioritization: if I do not have the security of being prioritized \u2014 of always knowing that someone or something will put me above all else \u2014 how can I feel safe in this world? The way in which a citizen expects her state to prioritize her wellbeing over the lives of those across the border, no matter the price, mirrors her expectation that her partner will always prioritize her needs over those of others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

These expectations are rooted in the same illusion that our wellbeing and safety require hierarchical structures, and that we need to be more important than others to ensure that our needs can be met. This is based in a fear-oriented paradigm that assumes scarcity, as well as in the illusion that the fulfillment of our life\u2019s needs relies on actions of others external to us \u2014 that we are not the drivers of our own experience. Our understanding of safety assumes that we can control the external, manipulate our surroundings so that we can anticipate and rely on things happening our preferred way, and build a reality that meets those expectations. <\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Letting Go<\/b><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But in these moments of darkness when suddenly nothing makes sense, we have a learning opportunity of a lifetime to confront the truth, which is that we have no control, no escape from constant change. The only moments we can find safety are when we accept the ever-changing nature of our world, breathe into what is without averting our gaze, and accept that all we can do is try our best to bring safety and love to as many people as we realistically can.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

These moments \u2014 happening as they are in the midst of much agony \u2014 are sacred teachers of how we can love each other: When we accept that safety and security cannot be engineered through commitments and expectations, that life is erratic and unexpected, we have an opportunity to imagine what it might be like if we choose to love with all our might in every moment that allows it. We are open to practicing truly uninhibited universal care for all human beings, as we know that any structures or agreements will eventually disintegrate . . . like almost everything else that exists on Earth.<\/span><\/p>

And yet, in seeming contradiction, these critical moments also teach us that we have tangible needs that require us to rely on support from others (sometimes in a way that implies hierarchy or prioritization). We understand that focusing our care and love on some before others is a phenomenon embedded in our DNA as a mechanism for survival \u2014 but the revolution is in our ability to extrapolate from this natural function the tools to expand our hearts to love all beings unconditionally.<\/span><\/p>

This past December, when the atrocities were piling up and the humanitarian situation in Gaza was starting to plummet, I was spending many sleepless nights trying to coordinate the movement of my friend\u2019s family from Gaza City to a haven in the south. One morning I awoke to a message from my friend linking to an Al Jazeera news report displaying a photo of a family of about 25 men, women, and children, all waving white flags. The caption identified the family; they had my friend\u2019s last name. They had been bombed on their way to the safe space in the south. All of them were killed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

My heart stopped; we had failed, and perhaps I was partly responsible for this unbearable tragedy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

A few minutes later, we discovered that my friend\u2019s family was still in their home. They had not yet tried to leave and were still safe. Immediately I felt relief, but then I wondered Why does my friend’s family deserve to live more than this other family with many of the same characteristics and the exact same family name? If real love is universal, why should I feel any less disturbed by <\/span>their <\/span><\/i>death?<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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