We’re Turning Away From Love And It’s Killing Us

The day my father passed, my mother got it in her head that all their worldly belongings should be up for grabs. “If you kids don’t want them, let someone else enjoy them,” she said, as if she, too, was done with life.

Their hodgepodge of art, decor, furnishings, books, cookware, and memorabilia accumulated over 54 years of marriage was now a disturbing, visual offense—one that carried stark reminders that the life they shared together was gone forever.

During our weekly visits, Mom continued to harp about all her “stuff” with a tinge of annoyance or sadness depending on her mood. “I can’t take them to my grave, you know,” she’d say, swooping her arm across the living room.

I wanted no part of honoring her death wish, unconscious as it may have been. I felt sure that with time she’d ultimately feel liberated from her role as caregiver during my father’s 15-year, grueling decline through Parkinson’s. But while I waited for her spark to return, her world darkened with the quiet shadow of feeling lost, purposeless, and no longer needed—and three years later, she left us, too.

Most of us don’t memorialize our loved ones for their wealth or possessions. Instead we embed ourselves in their legacy of rich memories that shaped their existence and bring us to tears as we mourn their passing. We sum this up with one word, “love,” and my mother embodied it to her core.

On Memorial Day, I usually think about the people I still love who are no longer here to entertain or lighten my day. But those thoughts were disrupted yesterday when I read that a former president wished a happy holiday “to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country”

Who’s the scum he’s referring to? I can’t imagine, but it lead me to theorize that everything in this world, including one former president, drives us away from love in one way or another, and it’s this u-turn away from the reliable normalcy of love that’s destroying us.

We are pushed away from love when we are dismissed as nobodies until we attain a certain measure of wealth. We are further pushed away from love when we are taught to bend a knee to the wealthiest among us. When we watch our judicial system extend exceptional privileges just to the wealthy, we understand there’s no love of justice anymore, and it’s the corrupt among us who get the free pass. That’s a turnabout from the one branch of government we confidently once put our faith in.

But worse yet, our love of truth and democratic principles is now demonized as a divisive, inharmonious flaw in the rule of law that favors one party and gives it the advantage to win. This narrative and the election lies orbiting around it has done more to disrupt our love of each other. Can anyone, whether leaning left or right, love someone who’s set on throwing us under the bus of dictatorship? Isn’t that what we all fear is now at stake? The money that funds the scam doesn’t have an answer because it doesn’t care about you or me, it just cares about having more power, status, and money.

As news channels drone on in their effort to spin out more of the kind of reassuring news we prefer to hear, I realize they are just satisfying their customers. Riling us up and keeping us on the edge of our seats waiting for the happy ending is what good entertainment does. Who cares if it’s a lie? News corporations don’t mind rolling in the dirt if it means rolling in money, too. We just have to remember their fiction doesn’t end with us all living happily ever after. We have to reconnect with each other for that goodness to happen.

On Memorial Day, I wondered how did my generation that preached peace and love fall into the trap of making money King? For a nation that claims a certain exceptionalism for its Christian values, it seems we’ve abandoned our egalitarian roots. Most of us are familiar with the biblical teaching that reminds us that it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than those who place their faith in wealth to enter the kingdom of heaven. But the Buddhists also have a teaching that is less metaphorical and more to the point:

“Nor grain, nor wealth, nor store of gold and silver,
Not one amongst his women-fold and children,
Nor slave, domestic, hired man,
Nor any one that eats his bread,
Can follow him who leaves this life,
But all things must be left behind.

But every deed a man performs,
With body, or with voice, or mind,
T’is this that he can call his own,
This with him take as he goes hence.
This is what follows after him,
And like a shadow never departs.

Let all, then, noble deeds perform,
A treasure-store for future weal;
For merit gained this life within,
Will yield a blessing in the next.”