Tonight I'm sorting through the clutter in my study and my mind is wandering a rather circuitous path involving all the little trinkets family members have given me, all the little drawings my kids have given me, the shelf full of little turtle figurines I've received over the years, and so on. In a few words, I'm thinking of all the things people do and say, all the little ways they show and tell me that they love me. It's a pretty amazing thing, once you stop to listen to all the different ways people speak their love.

I've learned something the hard way in life, and I wish I had been wiser sooner. Of course, you can never be wiser sooner. It's the passing of time that makes you wiser— all the mistakes you make and witness through the passing of time are life's most effective lessons. You start out in your teenage years mostly thinking about love in terms of how great it makes you feel, which is to say, how much it validates your own pretend-sense of being totally awesome. It takes a long, long time to get out of that habit, and some people never do. The blatant narcissism of youth becomes more shadowy and sophisticated as years come and go and sometimes it passes away in full, but I'm pretty sure I've met people who lived to a ripe old age and went to their graves thinking love was all about what they could out of it for themselves. I bet they were miserable the whole time, and one of the interesting things is that there's a lot of sincere, well-meaning advice which comes through legitimized channels yet unwittingly helps to support a self-centered approach to loving and being loved.

As an example of such advice, while I've been going through the clutter I've been thinking about the phrase "Love languages," which I know I've written about before; maybe here in the blog, maybe not. There are some well respected folks who try to teach us adults that in a relationship, you have to learn your partner's love language, and then speak it. If your hubby thinks nachos and football are part of being truly loved, then you make a point of making sure he gets his cheese and chips in front of a big screen. If your wife thinks holding hands on the couch while watching a romantic movie is the cat's meow, then you'd better get to working on your DVD rentals. Of course it's a bit more than those things, but you get the point. Now, this is a good idea, it really is, and I don't want to be construed as saying that we shouldn't try to help our partners feel loved on their own terms; we should, absolutely. There is a basic human need for being loved in ways we naturally feel, and I would never claim otherwise. And, again, I say we need to learn how to love others in ways which resonate with them. However, there are a few shortcomings with this version of the love languages approach per se, and I think it's worth a few minutes to mention them.

First of all, people being the way we are, there is almost always a tendency within us to be selfish. Upon being presented with the love languages approach, this tendency within us manifests itself as being primarily concerned with whether or not the other partner is getting with the program and speaking our love language on our terms. And if they aren't, then we now have a new gripe about our partner, a gripe that is sanctioned by whoever it was who taught us the love languages idea. "Dr. Tony says you should be trying to speak my love language, and you're not. If you won't do what he says, then I'm beginning to think you don't love me (and now I have proof)." The difficulty here is that in our selfishness, we are always looking for points to make about how we aren't getting what we want, and love languages can become just another one.

Second, I may just be a royal cynic, but there is a risk in the love language thing that goes something like this: suppose you strive to learn your partner's love language, and you speak it. Good for you. You're ahead of most of us. Further suppose that you speak it regardless of whether they speak yours back to you. Good for you. You're ahead of almost all of us. But, here's the kicker. You have to be willing to mean it when you speak the language of another, and you have to be able to do it freely and without any attachment. I'll take the sports example again, because I'm not much into sports so it's a safe, non-personal example. Suppose you follow your spouse to all sorts of sporting events, talk baseball and football, learn the teams and the players, sit through the sports parties, watch the games, cheer when "your" team wins and all the rest—but you really don't care. Someday, you and your partner are going to have a tiff, and the facts are going to come out that you don't like sports, you think it's all stupid, and you only did it for him or her. Again, maybe I'm just a royal cynic, but, doesn't speaking love languages like this sound a bit like plain old dishonest behavior, or at least disingenuous? And, maybe this should be point three but I've already mentioned it so I'll consider it a sub-point: it's very easy for us to end up resenting all the love language we've been speaking on behalf of another, doing all manner of things that we feel are, in and of themselves, a complete waste of time. This is the old "I wasted the best years of my life trying to love you, and for what?" syndrome. If speaking the other person's language forces you to be something too different from your natural self, too often, for too long, odds are you're going to end up genuinely hating something or someone—likely to include hating yourself.

There are answers to these points, and the general thing they have in common is that the love languages thing is a good idea, but only if the two of you are already mature enough to understand who is doing what, with what motivations, for what reasons, and at least one of you is willing to participate honestly without any attachment to outcome or reciprocity. I think it's fair to say this requires a lot of work and dedication, but I think it's also fair to say that if you're serious about loving somebody, then you'll dedicate yourself and do the work. But, all in all, I think there's an approach that is based in the concept of love languages yet makes a whole lot more sense, is a whole lot easier, and theoretically offers much more promise of success: The most basic and valid point of the idea of love languages is that we each naturally perceive and offer love in different ways. So I say, take that fact and apply it to how you listen. Instead of worrying about the other person speaking your language and loving you up the way you want to be loved up, start paying attention to whatever love language they are speaking when they are simply being themselves with you. So your woman isn't much of a nachos and football fan, or your man hates chick flicks. But I'll bet they do a bunch of other things that say "I love you" all the time. There's a good chance that they are constantly giving wondrous speeches about their love for you, every day, and you can't hear a word of it because you're too busy selfishly complaining—if only in your head—to simply stop and listen to what they are saying. We each need to learn to understand what is being said to us by others in the most uniquely special ways in a dialect that is not our natural tongue. It's a pretty amazing thing, to see all the ways people are loving us freely and of their own accord, once we shut up and stop telling them how to do it. And you know what? Lots of times people love us in ways that are far better than those we would ask for in the first place. I am so richly blessed by the dozens of ways people love me every day—most of them ways I would never think to ask for myself. Once you get the hang of listening like this, you begin to learn that what's important is not how people show their love to you, but simply that they do love you. In the overall scheme of things, it's a pretty terrific thing to be loved by anyone in any way.

Not everybody gets that chance in life, but most of us do. We just need to learn what people are saying to us. Here's wishing you a terrific new year full of love, grace and compassion.

Typically, I try to avoid posting about current pop news. But I couldn't resist this one, because it's simple and carries one or two important points.

You can search for the news on your own, but basically the rapper and actor Will Smith said in an interview that he doesn't think Adolf Hitler woke up one morning and thought to himself that he was going to set out to do the most evil thing he could think of. But rather, by a twisted, backwards logic, Hitler thought he was doing a good thing.

For this, Smith has caught a fair amount of flak, mostly because the media who quoted him preceded the quote by saying that apparently Smith thinks Hitler was a good person. Smith has now had to come back, understandably enraged, and clarify his point. To this, I'm thinking, clarify what? Here's one of my aphorisms from a few years ago:

We mustn't forget that all of the horrendous acts of hatred, brutality and injustice throughout history were carried out by people who believed they were correct and justified in all they did. We must surely check ourselves against our bigotry and our hatred, but what we must examine most closely and most honestly are our convictions of what is right and what is wrong. A little hatred can destroy the entire world—but not before a flawed system of belief justifies it in the mind of the perpetrator.

So, presuming that I understand Smith's comment correctly (and I believe I do), then I agree with Smith. Point one of the story is precisely that there are very few people who set out to do evil intentionally; they are just horribly, tragically mistaken about what is and what is not good or evil. This is a lesson we each need to take to heart, and remember each day in even the smallest of circumstances and decisions.

Point two is just as simple. Never underestimate the ability of people to take a thoughtful insight and turn it into a baseless, emotional firefight.

I've been interested lately in finding the most simple of points to make about being human, points that might help all of us to share God's love and mercy more fully with one another. In that vein, I've become mildly intrigued by the story of Kim Peek, the "real-life Rain Man" who (along with other autistics and savants) inspired the Cruise/Hoffman movie. As it turns out, Mr. Peek is far more of a savant, and far less capable of taking care of himself, than Hoffman's Raymond Babbitt. If you have a few minutes, perform a web search for Mr. Peek's story, or check out a decent five-part video of him over at YouTube.

I'll just mention a few things about Mr. Peek's abilities, as I recall having read: He has memorized the content of between seven and eight thousand books; if you name two cities in the United States, he can give you driving directions, complete with ZIP codes; he has memorized countless facts regarding a wide variety of subjects; and much, much more. My personal favorite is that he can listen to a symphony once, and from then on recall the full musical score for each of the symphony's instruments. Yet, he cannot dress himself and he requires 24/7 care for the more "normal" of human activities.

I was watching a documentary which included Mr. Peek, and it was during the show that some of my earlier thinking about people really solidified. I have a very simple point, one that most of us have probably thought of many times before, but I'm unconvinced that many of us apply it in our daily living: We are all different. The spin that the stories of savants puts into the point is that those stories help us to imagine—sort of—the incredible complexity of the brain and mind. Given that the brain and mind are so complex, doesn't it stand to reason that there is an infinite diversity of human abilities, traits, strengths, weaknesses, and quirks and, most importantly, this is just the way it is—the way we are? I understand that statistically speaking there are people who fall into certain portions of a mathematical distribution, and we call the larger portions, those with the most area under a curve, "normal." And sure, we have a lot of similarities because we are all human beings, we share a whole lot of genetic material, we share a lot of biochemistry, and because we are socialized in various groups. But there are differences, too, and there will always be differences. So, why do we spend so much time expecting other people to act a certain way, think a certain way, be good at certain things, and so forth? This is a simple point, but it is not a trivial point. We each have our own traits, and this is the way it is. So why do we complain about the differences, and what's worse, why do we expect people to be able to simply change traits (or throw away traits) that we don't like? "Oh well," people will say, "People like Kim Peek have obvious problems, and that makes them unique. We don't expect them to adjust; they can't. But, you know, normal people can and should simply adjust and fit in." But this is my point. If we can step back for a few moments, and throw away our black/white filters, and place everyone on a continuum, we will see that all of the line-drawing and categorization and mathematics are, largely, artificial. We mustn't let them determine for us how we see, judge, or value others. There is no pure normal. Each one of us is different from every other one of us. Why can't we deal with that?

So, the sword is double-edged. One, let's let other people be uniquely themselves. If God needed more copies of you or me, then God would've made more copies of you or me. But God didn't. So, don't argue with what God has created. Two, God has created you and me. Our responsibility is to be uniquely ourselves, and to be so most fully so that we can accomplish God's loving purposes on earth. So, let's let each other be free, and while we're free, let's love one another deeply, passionately and profoundly in the ways that are uniquely our own.

I probably shouldn't admit this, but the word "fun" signifies something that I'm not sure I understand. I have a personal—issue, I guess you'd say, with words like "happy" and "fun." I understand joy, I understand contentment, and the opposite of the two. But fun and happy? I honestly don't know a lot about what people mean by those. Usually when I talk to my big brother on the phone, he'll ask me if I've done anything for fun lately. I think I mutter something like, "Well, I'm still going to school, and class is fun, I guess, sort of." I've about decided, and I don't mean this in a negative way, that somewhere in my past I gave up on fun and happy and traded them for joy, contentment and meaning.

But, I will say that "fun" seems to be the best word to describe playing with the kids yesterday. Santa brought a Wii to our house Christmas morning, and I have to tell you that if you haven't played a Wii before, you need to. I'm not much on endorsing products, or promoting the spending of money on frivolities, but the Wii works far better than I presumed it would, and it makes for great family time. And, it gives you a workout. Laughing, yelling, screaming, and working up a sweat in the comfort of your own living room with the whole family. Yep. That's fun. And meaningful. So maybe it's not so frivolous, either.

If you can find one, get a Wii.

I don't know how long the link will be active, but this news story is about one of my cousins. A year or two before he died, David told my mom that there were only two men who had ever shown any constructive interest in his life. So my mom asked who they were, and he said one of them was my dad. Pressing further, my mom asked what my dad had ever done to merit the complement. "Once when I was little, I was trying to build something, and he showed me how to hold a hammer the right way."

I was told this story yesterday, and I can't stop thinking about it. Out of thirty-five or forty years of living, a guy remembers five minutes of "how to pound a nail" as a meaningful memory of feeling valued.

Kind of makes me reconsider all the moments I interact with everybody else. I get so lost in the past or the future; a past done and gone and a future which may never come, that I forget life is happening right now in this very moment—that life is happening only in this moment. And—my God—how the most brief, most simple of things can forever mean something to another soul.

Think about it. I know I will.

This past week the master leather worker and saddle maker Slim Green passed away at the age of ninety-one. I had the honor to once sit for a couple of hours while Slim shared with me some of his personal history. How often do you get to meet a person who has crafted for presidents, cowboys and movie stars since the 1940's, who knew almost everybody who was anybody in the history of Western saddle making, and whose work is the subject of museums from coast to coast? Not very often. Just once, I figure.

So Slim has ridden off to far greener pastures, and America has lost no small bit of her living history.

My sincere condolences to Slim's family, and my thanks to Slim for the time he took to tell me some of his fascinating tales.

Vaya con Dios, Slim. We'll see you on the flip side.

So. Class is over for a month, and I've only a week more of work until I (hopefully) get a week off for Christmas. I'm seriously hoping I get a little time to catch up on… well, no forget it. I never catch up on anything.

I've added a new link to the link bars here at rhrn.net: Hatchling Press. One of the things I've thought about for several years is the idea of starting a publishing business (of sorts), and I've decided that one of my back-burner goals for 2008 is to get it going. This is only dependent upon the two precious commodities time and money. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. But, at least I got the domain set up. Sort of. If you bounce around too much between here and there (like, once) you'll probably find that the masked domain forward plays havoc with the URLs. That's what I get for being cheap.

Here's hoping for a few posts over Christmas break.

I received a couple of requests to make this essay available, so here it is. I've placed it over on the writings & projects pages, but you can grab a pdf here.