Love is Diligent Election
I have heard people say they love many things from Hot Yoga to Guacamole to Beignets to Fridays...
This short essay was written in response to a prompt from Write of Passage to share a rule by which I live by and why. If you have yet to subscribe, please do so below.
I have heard people say they love many things from Hot Yoga to Guacamole to Beignets to Fridays. Yet this isn’t love. These may be things we would order above others but we were not made to place premiums over people.
In the English Speaking West, there has been a recent fashion of looking to the Ancient Greeks to understand love. They say love is like the God Love known as Agape. English Speakers describe this desirable love as unconditional or even selfless but to me, these are strange assertions. There can be no existence without condition and it is impossible to love another if there isn’t a self.
When Jerome, the great Saint who assembled what we now know as the Bible, came to translate the Hebrew and Greek words for love, he chose a Latin portmanteau, Dilectionis, meaning in English: Love is Diligent Election.
We then should not wonder when we see love receding from the world. Diligence has been relegated to the religion of work and elections are now made merely for politicians. What would happen if diligence was recovered by deciding daily to love ourselves, neighbors, and Creator? What if everyday is an election made for the enduring selection of one another? Love, to me, is a miracle that may be practiced and experienced if diligent election is returned to its rightful direction.
As a Mexican, my ancestors taught me to greet another with an embrace and a kiss. Diligence was for prayers not labor or business. The election talk we exchanged over dinner were words regarding ways we continued to choose each other.
There is a lie going around that Latin is a dead language, but Latin is the last bastion of living love. English is flourishing like an infection spreading death as it directs laborers’ attention to the illusions of wealth alleged to be acceptance deceptively promising love.
The love I wish to give, receive, and see in this world is the practice of enduring choosing. Like the man who watches over the widow. Like the woman who cares for the orphan. Like the foster kid abandoned by his parents still choosing to lay down his life for his friends. Love for me will always be Diligent Election.
Until next week,
-Steven
"English is flourishing like an infection spreading death as it directs laborers’ attention to the illusions of wealth alleged to be acceptance deceptively promising love."
Wow. I grew up with English being the language of the successful. "Si no hablas inglés, no vas a llegar a ninguna parte".
You're right; the vernacular whoring out the word "love" has cheapened even the relationships which are meant to be loving. Younger kids with whom I've interacted are often quite confused about love.