"The Truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire."
~ Viktor Frankl
Holocaust Survivor and author of the psychology classic, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl’s insight into humanity’s highest aim seems particularly potent on February 14.
Valentine’s Day is a solitary marker, in the vast sea of 365 days, that is specifically assigned to the celebration of love. If love is, in fact, the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire perhaps it requires a little more effort than the single mid-month push each February. I mean if we only chose to exercise one day out of the year what would be the state of our overall fitness? Furthermore, the day of the heart isn’t even a Statutory Holiday, the designation of which would at least give us the full day to place our attention on the purpose of human existence.
I think this year deserves a particularly measured pause. After all, as a global community, we’ve spent the bulk of the last two cycles around the sun masked, physically distanced or in lockdown. Can we agree that love implies connection, closeness and vulnerable exposure? Can we truly experience love in its highest form in an environment that places safety as its first priority?
Tao signifies the way that is in line with natural order. The way of love is not as obscure as one may think. Yes, there is the enigma of love as professed by the poets, songwriters, novelists and expressers of the human condition. Love is a staple of the arts but what about science?
The path of love lies within. Like each river must find its own way to the ocean, so too, each person must make the journey to the heart. There is largely one non-negotiable for the success of the pilgrimage. Safety cannot be the highest priority.
“Stay safe.” “Be safe.” “Keep safe.” These are the cries of COVID that often imply masking our smiles and staying away from others. These reactionary measures are reflections of an inner orientation toward survival.
Neurologically, survival is a function of the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic or ‘automatic’ nervous system is reactionary in nature, reflexively responding to your environment. Part of this system is responsible for your fight, flight, freeze, fawn or flop stress response. Called the sympathetic nervous system, it is designed to keep you safe and, ultimately, protect your life. The autopilot nature of sympathetic behaviour is, by definition, unconscious. To overrule hardwired survival, you have to become a conscious ruler of your 37.2 trillion cell, body kingdom.
The sympathetic nervous system includes the sympathetic chains which run parallel to the spinal column from the base of the skull to the tailbone. Like electric fences, these chains function to keep you safe. Guarded, you are protected from external dangers but, also, imprisoned by the same chains.
Physiologically, safety as the highest priority reinforces reactionary unconsciousness in the form of the body’s fight and flight reaction. The foundation of this system is separation. It is dependant on an ‘us’ and ‘them’ point of view. It requires an inside force to protect and an outside force to defend against. This is helpful when you place your hand on a hot stove or, as an infant, you don’t have sufficient awareness to navigate your environment. Your life must be defended and preserved. But there comes a time in human development where we must rise above knee-jerk responses, take charge of our destiny and make conscious choices based on love, connection and the common sense awareness that we are all one. It’s science. The ecology of relationship. The great web of life. You cannot affect one life without influencing another.
In Ontario in the '70s, the government sprayed campgrounds to kill mosquitos. They then discovered dead birds.
A person totally unknown to you, could stay up late working on a presentation. For two weeks, they’ve been burning the candle at both ends. They’re having trouble in their marriage and their child’s teacher is constantly calling them about behavioural outbursts in class. Running on empty, this stranger is exhausted. What do they have to do with you? They closed their eyes just for a second on their early morning commute. They didn’t see you stopped at the light.
We’re all connected.
Consciously, you can choose your impact.
Did you set aside time to reflect in November guided by the Choose Your Path blog? My one little word for 2022 is CONNECTIONS. Love connects us all. Not love based on conditional circumstances - father, mother, daughter, relative - but a LARGE love. A love that recognizes that separation is scientifically an illusion.
I agree with Viktor Frankl, “... Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire.”
Today, Valentine’s Day 2022, I invite you to join me in my quest to live more consciously and love more completely; to rise above the basic need for safety and soar in the freedom of love. Like building a muscle, learning to love is a scientifically trainable skill. Let’s do this. Together.