No, I never do and never will. I disagree with the notion of "unconditional love". Like all other emotions, "love" always and necessarily has a very real source in the workings of our minds that I believe is traceable and explainable and I believe we MUST all make a conscious effort to do both. That it is so, in my opinion, does not reduce the impact of the emotion or its significance nor does this rational approach to human emotion imply such a consciously understood love is any less intense. Quite the contrary. It's my belief that understanding the very real conditions at the root of every one of our emotions allows us to fully integrate them into who we are and want to be to work consistently for our benefit rather than to continually work against what we know is right and prudent for ourselves and those we care for. Knowing what led to love in our minds allows us to consciously encourage the conditions needed to increase its intensity and experience a more realistic and valuable kind of love. All too often, we fall victim to our emotions because we disconnect them from what is true, from condition. And too, we are often emotionally numb because we do not notice or understand when conditions dictate we ought to be empassioned but clearly are not. In other words, there are times for great emotion and times when emotion is unwarranted. We must become practiced in knowing which is which. The way to do that is to restore all emotion to real conditions instead of leaving them to chance.

"Unconditional love" is an attempt to remove our emotions from their source - our personal experiences, our understanding, our values, our goals, current context, changes in context, etc. which effectively cuts us off from control over them and, in my thinking, cuts us off from their potential value while overly exposing us to their dangers. I don't believe "unconditional love", in its literal meaning, is actually love at all. Saying that one can love no matter what has happened, is happening, or will happen, i.e. love regardless of what is true, is necessarily saying that one's love has no weakness and therefore can have no real strength.

A conscious love tied to very real conditions means a supportable love means a strong love. A love, conscious or subconscious but, in any event, disconnected from any real conditions - i.e., disconnected from cause and effect, from consequence - means an unsupportable love means a love too weak to maintain and of no real value to those we claim to love. Rational love can be believed and trusted. If one is the recepient of such love, one knows clearly why it exists, what it takes to keep it alive and what will surely destroy it. The "unconditional" or irrational love has no answer to why, no clear indication of what it takes to keep it and no clue to why and when it will end. Such a "love" does neither the lover nor the loved any favors and spends valuable time pretending to what could otherwise be authentic emotion directed at the truly deserving.

None of this is to say, however, that many of those who claim "unconditional love" do not feel that love genuinely. What this is saying is, although they call it "unconditional", I would argue it actually is not. I've seen that, quite often, although we and others may believe the love we feel is inexplicable, in fact, it is quite often simply consciously unexplained until we choose to give it conscious thought. When our feelings are being tested by events and behaviors, who hasn't from time to time asked themselves "Why do I love _______ ?" Fill in the blank with whatever or whomever you claim to love unconditionally or "inexplicably". We may not have arrived at love or feelings as a conscious choice, however, we often arrive at love by subconscious choice out of very real conditions which we promptly dismissed in our minds once we'd dealt with them and for all sorts of personal and cultural reasons. I happen to believe most of our reasons for dismissing the conditions that do genuinely exist behind all of the emotions we feel regardless of their direction are terribly unhealthy ones.

Leaving love to whim and disconnected from conditions leads us to grant love when it is grossly undeserved and leads us frequently to deny love when it has instead been genuinely earned. Reconnecting our emotions to the conditions that led or lead or will lead to them restores their value to ourselves and others and restores us, hopefully, to the status of whole human beings.

I like to say, careful in your desires to disconnect from reality - you often get what you wish for ... and then some.

Lately, I find I can't even think in those terms. As consistently as I'm able, I'm focused on the here and the now. You might even say I have an aversion to even the tiniest focus on the past or the future because they seem regularly an unwarranted distraction from what's happening. A key word in my thinking lately has been "awe" which seems to be something I can only experience if I'm entirely present. Personally, I can't genuinely relate to the pure awe I may have experienced in the past, and certainly know nothing of the pure awe I may or will experience in the future. Of course, I can imagine both easily enough but those imaginings aren't the awe itself nor are they that which did or will effect the emotion. All in all, I want to spend time in awe rather than simply thinking about it. Some do and might think me criminal for being rather irresponsible in my attentions to the future and perhaps might scold me for disregarding the past more than they believe I should. To some extent, they are right to scold.

If I relate to past and future at all, it's of course through the eyes of one who values the here and now above all other consideration. To me, the "past" is merely that which just ended and, the future, merely that which just began. To me, each "now" breath is the last breath of my past and the first breath of my future. Each "here" is the last step of the journey behind me, the first step of the path forward. I'm always ending and beginning in the very same act - here and now - and that is the extent of my relationship with past and future. I can focus on endings or I can focus on beginnings but, at least true for my own mind, I cannot focus on both simultaneously. In any event, focsusing on one or the other leaves no room at all to focus on here and now. So, I simply don't change focus away from what's important to me, at least, not primarily.

To honor the intent of the question, I suppose, like so many others, I used to focus a great deal on my future and, perhaps, obsessively so. So many times I have worked very hard for a planned future that was quite inexplicably and callously replaced by an unplanned one. I eventually reached a threshold of disappointment I could not survive if I pressed as always. I did not deliberately choose my change of focus. It was chosen for me by circumstance and my basic desire to live no matter what. The dictionary would call this "forbearance". It has come to me at tremendous cost and it is not a lesson I'm likely to ever forget. I live now indifferent to past and future. They are times and places I can only imagine. They forever rest against me as petulant rivals for my attention but I refuse to surrender myself to either. As I said, the experience of "awe" has become extremely important to me and it simply does not exist but here and now. In the past, it is disassembled by fragile memory, in the future, it is washed by uncertainty.

It is pure only once ... and I will have it.

By now, just about everyone is familiar with the controversy surrounding the "atheist" centered bus slogans appearing on the sides of buses in Europe. Today, I discovered a fun website that lets you generate your own slogan boards for a generic red bus and I toyed around with it a bit. Although the site can be used to have quite a bit of fun and, of course, used for many sorts of meanness, I thought I'd use it to fashion slogan boards I'd like to see displayed with slogans I find particularly true and meaningful.

You too can play with the generator at "Bus Slogan Generator" and can visit the first few photos I created and posted into my newly-created photo album at TinyPic.com.

Check 'em out and let me know your thoughts and feelings.

Peace, love, awe and long life -

Naumadd

I just purchased this in ebook form from Sony/Borders - I happen to love the Sony Reader I received as a Yule gift in 2007 - and have been reading this very odd but fascinating bi-racial biography of Mr. Clarence King - a noted high-society "white" scientist, explorer, author and storyteller who led the double life of a black man with a wife and family of five children. It's often incredibly surprising what some people will endure to be happy. Mr. King was apparently quite a brave and ingenius man in many more ways than one considering the very racist times in which he lived.

My attention was originally drawn to the book by a New York Times book review you can read here:



If you like fascinating biographies, check it out.

"Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line"

Recently, a four-billion-dollar lawsuit was filed against performer Miley Cyrus on behalf of "asian" individuals as a result of some offensive behavior in some published photos. Silly ... and silly.

I believe we ought to reserve compulsory restitutions for genuine damages to person and property and refrain from restitutions for mere "hurt feelings". Ought one be compensated for one's own emotional immaturity?

I will never regret the discomforts of genuine honesty nor belittle those earned pleasures in its discovery and those experiences of its consequence.

I wish to live a real life and spare myself death before its time.

It may sound unusual coming from someone to whom the power of words means so much but, I'd have to say there are no words sufficient to anything and everything one may or will attempt to name. This is to say, no matter how many words or the quality of the words one applies or hopes to apply to a place, a time, a thing or a life, the words will come up so far short as to seem no words at all. Words, of course, are not the experience and we perhaps ought not ever have believed our words up to the challenge we give to them. I'd be the last to say we ought not try.

We believe sometimes our many diverse words for "love" are sufficient to the thing itself. They are not. We believe the word "beauty" is sufficient to that which is beautiful - it is not - and neither is the word "ugly" sufficient to genuine ugliness. We believe our words for "mother" or "father", "lover", "companion", "child", "home", "war" or "peace", "nature", "universe", "right" or "wrong" are sufficient to those things - the list can go on and on but ... I trust you get my point. We ourselves are not our designations, our names or our labels, our memberships or categories. We are not our descriptions. These are NOT sufficient. They never have been and likely never will be.

I use the word "me" in the appropriate ways but "me" is hardly a beginning to the real thing. "Me" tells you practically nothing at all. One has to ask then, what is its real utility?

There is no word or collection of words - no matter how large that collection - sufficient to anyplace, to anytime, to anything or any person. I've spent decades attempting to manufacture new ways of using the words I know, the words that are common and, from time to time, invent new words weaving them into new patterns to attempt to fill in what's missing. Despite the seeming impossibilities, I'm not ready to give up because, like so many and even though I believe on one hand words will forever be insufficient, on the other I believe they can be MADE sufficient with talent, skill and lots of determination. Perhaps, it's a fools belief.

But, it is what I have. It is what I love. In all humility, it is what I'm best at and I cannot and will not stop.

One word we have for my - our - seeming quandry is "contradiction". Another I'd tend to choose is "madness". Believe me ... the word is insufficient and, perhaps, there is no "good" word for it.

It seems I'm always hoping for rain and today will be no different. I've never quite been able to explain it but it's been true of me as far back into memory as I'm able recall. I seem made to be forever drawn to thick foreboding clouds and winds, the cloak of rain and thick fog and, of course when I can get it, I'm inexplicably at home in heavy snows. These describe the skies of my most authentic and unwavering spirit but, ironically, I'm also frustratingly sensitive to the cold which causes intense pain and have always had a genuinely paralyzing phobia of winds that frequently results in full-blown panic. It's nature's cruel joke I suppose. As some compromise, I've always loved walking in very gentle rains with only slight breezes where I tend to imagine the glee of my favorite trees as they get a drink in the welcome moisture in the cleansing wash.

I'd swear I can often hear the trees and brambles giggling in mockery at my usual silly pretensions to romance in the rain while looking somewhat instead like a drenched and slow-witted rat.

I try to ignore their impertinence.