Modern Love

A modern person is afraid to love. The modern person knows everything about fashion, how many calories are in a piece of white bread, how to pump up a beautiful figure in the gym - and if it doesn’t work out, you can hire a fat-sucker doctor and remove everything superfluous.

The modern person knows how and where to make money - actually, he does not always know how, but he knows for sure because in the environment or on the TV screen there are always people who are raking this money with a shovel.

The modern person listens to audio lectures, watches videos on YouTube, and knows all the fashion trends - how and where to live and relax, which school is right to send children, at what age to marry or not to marry at all.

The modern person often suffers not from a deficit, but from an excess, especially an excess of ideas that he needs a lot of all sorts of different things to be happy. For example, get a third master's degree. Or go to a spiritual teacher. Or earn some more money.

That's just the problem with love. It's like no one needs love.

The other day I visited a seminar and the lecturer read to the group a piece from the letter of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

The group got excited and said that the lyrics sounded kind of so-so. Weird. Unclear.

I thought: why? Perhaps because it contains all the "demons" that frighten the modern man.

Patience in the modern world is often interpreted as masochism.

Mercy and kind are associated with old women feeding cats, and with various archaic works in which the victims implore their executioners: "Have kind, be merciful!"

The absence of envy is bad manners, now it is customary not only to envy but also to admit one's envy, as well as to describe all aspects of what is desired. "I want to have both that and this".

Not to be proud - that is, in modern slang, "not to show off" - is simply impossible. What about FB and Instagram photos? What about telling? What about boasting? Not to be proud - how else to appropriate the results of achievements? How not to say: "Who is well done? I am well done!"

Do not act outrageously - but what about freedom of choice and other authentic behavior? Well, at least a little...

Not getting annoyed, not thinking evil is generally difficult, now any psi-beetle and toad are taught to "be yourself" and "express your true feelings." And if you are angry or plan to take revenge on your partner, for example, because he didn’t hear you, offended you, they will support you and say: “You have the right.”

It is difficult not to rejoice at untruth: the truth is not worth the price, because it often causes too strong feelings, everyone wants peace. Try to tell the truth, for example, to the parents of an addict - they say, you are to blame, you invested in your child, but not the one ... They will be upset, offended, they will not agree ... Or tell the woman: your marriage is doomed, even your students do not respect you at school - very offended. Therefore, a delicate varnished lie is better - it costs much more. This is taught in special training such as "The Art of Manipulation".

Covering everything, believing everything, hoping and enduring everything - well, a portrait of a co-dependent emerges directly.

So it turns out that love is not in trend, and not in price. Too many "not" wrote Paul the Apostle. It's too hard to love.

And all we need is Love. The child most of all needs the love of the mother, and if this flow of love, in the language of the constellators, is interrupted, the child begins to look for substitutes. Simulacra. Something to love him for.

And we try. Reaching. Learning. We are working. We fake smile. Trying to become someone who has something to love.

And true love is as simple as a Zen master's day. When he is hungry, he eats. When tired, he sleeps. When he is cold, he collects brushwood and makes a fire.

When a person loves, he simply loves. Not for a beautiful face and a perfect figure. Not for high wages. Not for achievement. He tolerates, appreciates, tries to build relationships, does not consider the other worse or better than himself, accepts him, believes in the best.

True love is exactly what Paul the Apostle wrote.