We struggle everyday to define our lives in the ways that we can, and here it is, the simple truth written in black and white in the pages of his book.
For most of us, we feel that selfless love is the highest order of love. That if you loved someone selflessly enough, you will attain happiness because you loved. And because the lover is loved completely and wholeheartedly. Apparently flawed.
Merton has managed to put it so eloquently in his book, that the process of selfless loving is depended on the one being loved. And that loving selflessly is only the first step.
I can try to tell you more, but I cannot do it better than Merton.
Love can be kept only by being given away
A happiness that is
sought for ourselves alone can never be found for a happiness that is diminished
by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.
There is a
false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to
sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in
unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is
no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore, the potential happiness of such
love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God’s inner life. He has
made the sharing of ourselves the law of our own being, so that it is in loving
others that we best love ourselves. In disinterested activity, we best fulfill
our own capacities to act and to be.
Yet there can never be
happiness in compulsion. It is not enough for love to be shared: it must be
shared freely. That is to say it must be given, not merely taken. Unselfish love
that is poured out upon a selfish object does not bring perfect happiness: not
because love requires a return or a reward for loving, but because it rests in
the happiness of the beloved. And if the one loved receives love selfishly, the
lover is not satisfied. He sees that his love has failed to make the beloved
happy. It has not awakened his capacity for unselfish love.
Hence
the paradox that unselfish love cannot rest perfectly except in a love that is
perfectly reciprocated: because it knows that the only true peace is found in
selfless love. Selfless love consents to be loved selflessly for the sake of the
beloved. In so doing, it perfects itself.
The gift of love is the
gift of the power and the capacity to love, and, therefore, to give love with
full effect is also to receive it. So, love can only be kept by being given
away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.
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