Lesson Two: Altruism

Dear Everest,
   
    You were born on your dad’s birthday: January 29, 2013 at 3:32 in the afternoon. You were undoubtedly the greatest gift your mom ever gave me. When you came out you went straight into your mom's arms. I kept trying to get as close as possible because I couldn’t stop staring. You were so perfect. But the nurses had to make sure you were a healthy baby, so I was pushed to the side. But every time they left a hole big enough for my head to fit, I’d squeeze in so I could stare at you some more. I’m sure the  nurses were getting frustrated that every time they left a spot momentarily I was filling it when they attempted to come back. After what felt like mere moments the nurses had to take you to clean you up and do more checks. I have never been more impatient in my life. I kept worrying about you. I went to look at you in the nursery every ten minutes even though the majority of the time I couldn’t see you. Finally they brought you back and bliss ensued. However, I  had slept on the hospital floor the night before in waiting for you so your mom wanted me to go home and sleep. That way I’d be more helpful the next day. I consider myself a strong man, Everest, but when the time came to leave you I wept more openly than you had all day. You had changed my entire outlook on life.


    Until the moment your mother gave me the wonderful news that we'd see you in 9 months, my life had been entirely devoted to the pursuit of finding your mother and being able to sweep her off her feet forever. Suddenly, there you were, perfection in my arms. I never imagined I could love anyone so completely, instantly. You awoke the realization of love that has nothing to do with romance. You remind me every day of the power that comes from such a love. As you grow old, you will come to realize that the world is filled with many people. Your decisions towards these people will greatly determine the man you become and the joy you experience.

    You're growing up in an age that over indulges in romance and ignores love for their fellow man. You will be so inundated with romance that you may forget that any other love is to be experienced. It is likely you will come of age at a time when even the smallest act of compassion, kindness, or tenderness to your fellow man--male or female--will be regarded as false, sarcastic, or romantic.  Do not accept that condition. Love for your fellow man will yield experiences that you will be incapable of experiencing in any other way. By loving others you are giving the world permission to be kind. You are allowing the world to show compassion. You are showing the world a cure for various ailments. The consequences are brilliant and unending.

    I once told you that there is a belief in the world that who you love is beyond your control. Many people have come to apply this lie as an intrinsic part of their lives. They allow unrestrained emotions and singular experiences to create a hodgepodge list of friends and enemies that can’t be altered or explained. This is just as wrong as hating someone for an ignorant reason, such as race or religion, because instead of it being a nonsensical reason, it lacks reason altogether. Others allow an individuals actions towards them to determine their feelings in regards to that person. Son, it would be a tragic use of your agency to have it given away at so pitiful a price. Life is so much more sweet when your feelings towards others are entirely your determination.

    You have a choice everyday, Ev. You can choose to love or to hate; ultimately there is no in between. Anger and hate may seem to be gratifying choices in the short term. But in time it will become bitter and rancid. It will quickly become a pattern, then a habit, then a lifestyle, and ultimately an addiction. Worse yet, the only way to purge yourself of such a cancer is through even more bitter and painful experience. The other side of the same coin is apathy. No gratification will ever come from choosing to ignore or treat with indifference the people around you many of whom need you and all of whom you need. Love, on the other hand, is not always easy in the short term, but the rewards will satisfy your deepest yearnings through eternity. You will never regret the choice to love.

    The way we treat others most often says more about ourselves than it does about them. If you hate someone that thinks differently than you, it shows your ignorance. If you hate someone that is awkward or socially insecure, it shows you are cruel. And if you hate someone that is unkind to you and others, it shows you are a coward. You have none of these attributes, Son, so don’t give into the temptation to imitate them.
   
    Everyone you met will be different. Some drastically so. Natural tendency when you meet them will be to look at what makes you different first. We want to stand out, be unique, and be admired for those differences. Unfortunately, we usually use those differences to either denigrate others and prop ourselves up as superior or to denigrate and belittle ourselves. Both are harmful consequences of a seemingly harmless choice. I'd suggest that you learn to look first at all the ways you are similar to those around you and use that as a template for learning to enjoy and respect those differences. If you can do that anyone you met, regardless of how verbose they are in their differences, will become easy to love, respect, and learn from.

    You will come across people whom despite their best efforts will still say and do things that are socially awkward and unpopular. I pray that you will never have to feel the desperation of someone that seeks so earnestly for acceptance and is still denied it. A wise man once said, “If you look for the bad in people, expecting to find it, you surely shall.” Our society focuses far too much on the 2% that is difficult to love and not nearly enough on the 98% that makes them incredible. Rather than looking for the bad, seek the good. You will find it! Take great care to insure people of your acceptance because there are many who will resort to drastic and often destructive means to achieve acceptance. If you love, that individual will be benefited in overcoming the 2%. If you reject that person will caustically defend and justify the 2% to their own destruction. I’ll wager if you look, you’ll never fail to find something to love about everyone.
   
    No one can be universally loved, Son, although your mother in extremely close. Through all your efforts you will still find those that will treat you with unkindness. Love for these individuals requires the greatest effort of all. It requires that you remember that your happiness does not depend on what other people do to you, but rather what you do to other people. Nor does anyone else have the power to take away your worth and potential with their words or actions. Remember also that those who spend all their time making selfish considerations will never be satisfied in a world they must share. And responding to unkindness with like actions is an entirely selfish consideration. Overcoming this natural response will mean spending less time worrying about your self-worth. (If you ever doubt, come to your mom or I because we could discuss for hours how incredible you are.) Instead fill your time with thoughts for others.

    Another wise man once said, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies we would find in each man's life sorrow and suffering to disarm all hostility.” Don’t allow fear of insult or injury to deny you the ability to love those whom could easily be called enemies. In most cases these people are acting out of fear and insecurity themselves. In even more cases responding to unkindness with confidence and love will astonish an aggressor even more than physical retribution. Now, please don’t mistake this to mean that you cannot defend yourself and others from physical and verbal abuse. You have my full permission to do so. But remember that all such defense is doubly effective when it arises from love rather than hate and anger. And, yes, I couple those emotions intentionally. Have the courage to love your enemy and serve those that spitefully use you.

    Now, Everest, there is a belief in the world that accepting someone exactly the way they are is the most genuine form of caring. You’ll be told not to judge. You’ll be told a person can’t help who they are so just embrace it. It would be a foolish mistake to adhere to this. It is true that you should never judge an individual as good or bad. Everyone in the world is fighting the balance of those two forces. It is further true that you must love everyone regardless of their actions, ideas, and beliefs. Yet it is the height of foolishness to claim that actions are neither good nor bad.

    Actions must always be weighed on this scale. If you truly love someone you will always have the inherently correct desire to encourage them to make good choices and reject bad. You’d never let a loved one cause physical pain to themselves; it makes just as much sense to seek to protect them from emotional and spiritual pain. However, you have no right to force a person to judge actions how you would judge them. You may encourage and inform, but you must never obligate an individual to conform to your belief system. Nor do you have the right to withhold love as consequence of their wrong choices. It is far better to invite someone to create their own goals to help better themselves and than encourage them in these goals.

    Son, there are so many awe-inspiring sights in this world. Yet of all God's awe-inspiring creations, his own children are irrefutably the most breath-taking. There are so many incredible view points out there. So many glorious ways of looking at life. So many thoughts, experiences, and emotions that you can only experience by giving your time to another. How can you not love your fellow man when you see them for what they are and what they are capable of? If you allow yourself to hate, ignore, or treat with apathy you are blinding yourself to the most awe-inspiring sights this world has to offer? The world is filled with individuals who need you.  Most that you meet won't realize their potential, but it is beyond finite comprehension. Help them to see it, Ev. Show others what they are capable of and your life with be filled with joy and purpose. I promise you that.  Love people, Everest. It’s that simple.

Lesson One: Romantic Love

 Dear Everest,
  
    One of my biggest hopes for you is that you will never met two individuals that are more in love than your mother and me. I love your mother with more feelings and emotion than I ever thought capable of feeling. The night before your mother told me she wanted to marry me, I had a dream. In the dream I was at a crowded amusement park. I knew I was looking for something, but I couldn't figure what. I saw girls I had known in my life: some I had dated, some I had wanted to, and some that were merely friends. Night began to set in and as I started toward a stone arch that marked the exit of the park I realized that when I crossed under it I would be without hope of finding the object of my search. In the last moments a girl from my youth approached and as we talked I came to two realizations.

     First, that I was there to find my wife. Second, this girl was most definitely not her. Hopelessness came over me and I felt I was destined to walk under the arch alone. Yet, as I approached it I saw a woman sitting on top of it. It was your mother. She greeted me with an expression of amused patience and the words, “What took you so long?” There was no question in my mind, no second of hesitation or doubt. She was the one. She jumped down from the arch, flying with the grace of an angel to my side. And we walked hand and hand through the arch. I didn’t marry your mother because of that dream. I had that dream because I had already decided I was going to marry your mother. I choose her and she choose me.


    The saying goes that you can’t help who you love. I suppose there may be a semblance of  truth in that when I comes to attraction. (Slight since I have found your mother more beautiful everyday since I fell in love.) However, attraction is not love. Love is a choice. Many have used that false statement to justify “falling out of love.” After all, if you can’t control who you love, you can’t control if it goes away. What utter nonsense. People don’t fall out of love, son, they just begin making selfish decisions again. I chose your mom. There was no “all powerful force” pushing me into her arms. I got to know her, realized how incredible she and how happy who she was made me, and I chose to fall in love with her. That choice culminated in my decision to completely give myself to her. Her happiness became inseparably connected to mine and I have never regretted that decision since.

    Love has been manipulated to refer only the rewards that result from love. Love is not music playing when she comes around. Love is not whispering sweet nothings during stolen moments together. And love has absolutely nothing to do with being happy as the world defines it. Love is simply when you become half of a whole. Love means binding yourself to a person of your choosing and forgetting how to function without her. Love is effort. It means working hard to provide for your spouse. It means learning to put up with many things that displeases you. It means forgetting to care about your happiness in exchange for hers. It means forming a family. It means having children. It means learning to live on a lack of sleep. It means learning to live with a lack of money. It means learning to handle the stress that will ensue from the aforementioned conditions. That is love.

     It is easy to be deceived. When you first begin courtship the rewards will seem to be instantaneous with seemingly zero effort. You’ll feel like your walking on air, like life is a musical and animals and flowers are actually singing to you when you're not looking. In fact love is so great you won't even realize the reason you’re giddy is because you’re being selfless in favor of someone you care about deeply. You are caring about her happiness, you're sacrificing everything to be with her, you're working hard to keep her smiling. If you are deceived in that way, somewhere down the road you may begin to feel like love has lost its luster. The thrill isn’t there anymore and you never have any “you” time. In other words, your carnal instinct for selfishness will begin to fight back. You may fail to realize that the reason you were happy is because you were living a life vastly richer than a self absorb existence.

    Many people are deceived and feel the only good thing about a relationship is the beginning. Yes, there is an element of mystery and excitement from new love, but there is absolutely zero reason why this ever need disappear. In truth, the rewards can over shadow the effort your entire life as long so you stop worrying about yourself and care only for her. Love, like anything else, does not lose its majesty by being known. But it requires what I have mentioned: work, sacrifice, and effort.

    Now you may be thinking why in the world should I bother with love? The answer is because of the rewards I have already mention. When you put forth that effort, then is the time that you start to hear music play when she smiles. That is the point where times only purpose is to count down the minutes until you see her. When your greatest joy is having her in the nook formed by your arm and chest. That is when you buy daises. It’s when your attraction for her becomes so strong you're shocked when you can focus on anything else. That is the point where you can look at her with your baby boy and be willing to give anything you own to stay with them and the only thing that could tear you away is your desired to give them everything they need. We define love by the rewards. This makes sense since the rewards are unparalleled by anything else on earth. That’s because love is celestial. But love is some much more than the rewards. Remember that rewards can never be separated from sacrifice and effort most especially with love.

    Now Everest, directly associated with the rewards of love is the gift of physical intimacy. You may feel that because the ability to have this intimacy is in your control that it belongs to you. It doesn’t. It belongs to your future spouse. It is hers and hers alone. To give that power to another is to rob your wife of the most valuable gift you can give her. Guard that gift as you would the riches of the earth. Know that the time to give that gift is after your have officially bonded yourself to her before men and God. Only then will the gift bless you as much as it blesses the woman you give it to. And only then will the results increase the rewards of love, rather then detract from them. The world has forgotten much of this. They have forgotten the definition of love and seek only the rewards. In the end, they lose the rewards they sought. Work hard against that influence that will drive you to forget.

    Ultimately, the moment you will know you are experiencing love to its full extent will come with a realization of inadequacy. You will once again begin to think of yourself, not in selfish terms but in all the ways you need to be better. Son, you may never feel that you are good enough for your wife. It isn’t true, of course, but you will begin to question how it is possible to live up to the walking definition of what you consider perfection. I will not tell you to ignore or respond with apathy to this feeling. It is there to push you every day to be better. Your wife does deserve the best man you can be and, Everest, as a son of God, your best IS perfection. As you begin to strive with all your heart to be worthy of your beautiful bride, the inadequacies will cease to be prevail and you will need less correction to feel equal to your wife. Never forget to make the Lord a part of this process.

    There is still much you will need to know about courtship and making a marriage eternal. For now it’s enough simply to make sure you understand what true love is. Like I said, I love your mother, Ev. My life has lost meaning as an individual and cannot be explained without her by my side. She is the reason I wake up in the morning, she is the reason sunlight is exciting, and she is the sweet dream through the night. I am so excited for you to experience the love that your mother and I share. Love is waiting, Everest, and no words can prepare you for the heaven that awaits being truly, irrevocably, and unequivocally in love.