Volume 2, Issue 1
January, 2008
Hi Everyone,
May I wish you the experience of love, peace and fulfillment in 2008. I
want you to know that I am truly grateful for your contribution to my
life.
HAS LOVE LOST ITS SOUL?
There are moments as a relationship therapist when I grow despondent.
This has to do with meeting so many people who are very confused
about love. It strikes me that our confusion is actually deepening in these
times and devolving into a complete ignorance. Our ignorance is not just
about how to give and take with a partner or how to maintain a loving
connection with them.
It is a total ignorance of the experience of
love itself.
Increasingly my clients do not know what real love is or
have any reference point for it. This is particularly the case for those
who have grown up interacting with each other via MSN, chat rooms,
text messaging, e-mail, cell phones and Blackberries. They have it seems
never developed their human ability to simply be with another person, to
communicate and feel deeply for them, and, perhaps most alarmingly, to
see them as a real, fragile and beautiful soul.
In our contemporary approach to relationships and love, it is my view
that we are turning each other into disposable products, commodities
and service providers, and reducing each other to objects that are used
to adorn our egos. Love is a business, and the success of the business is
determined by how well we strut our stuff and sell our wares. Has love
lost its soul?
If you’ve been my client, you know that I sometimes like to give
“homework assignments”. I have a homework assignment for you now.
On the next page is an ad which, honest to goodness, recently appeared
on craigslist.
Step 1: Read it. After reading it, decide whether you want to laugh or cry.
Step 2: Read the words about love which follow it written some 2000
years ago.
Step 3: Compare the two.
