LOVE

From a talk given by Werner Erhard on the Experience of Love in 1973

Let me tell you what love actually is. Love is the experience that someone’s all right the way they are. It’s not all the garbage. This thing about songs and all that survival stuff. All the stuff you talk about. What love actually is, is the experience that someone else is all right exactly the way they are. To love somebody you have to choose for them to be the way they are. Exactly. Not, "Gee, if you’d only cut your hair, then... you know, it would be okay." No, it’s got to be all right just that way. That’s perfect, that’s absolutely perfect, just that way. And, they’ve got to be all right the way they’re not. Now, if you make something all right the way it is and all right the way it’s not, what’s another word for that? Space. The person’s got the space to be. You know, they can be. They can be the way they are and they don’t have to. Because it’s all right with you for them not to be the way they are. And it’s all right with you for them to be the way they are. That’s love.

The bottom line is to accept the person the way they are and the way they are not, that’s love. Let me put it in more fundamental terms. To be able to tolerate someone the way they are and the way they are not – is loving them. The highest expression of love is the experience that you are creating that person exactly the way they are. They are your creation exactly the way they are, and you are creating the space for them to be any other way. That’s an ultimate expression of love. To create the space for people to be the way they are and to create the space for people to be the way they aren’t. That’s it. And if you’ll notice, there’s no survival, and it’s not worth anything. It’s not worth a thing. The only thing that happens to a person functioning in that space is that they discover themselves. The person creating that space – you know what happens to them? They discover themselves. That’s pretty much it on love. No big deal. It’s not all that complicated. It is relatively simple, just not so easy to do.

Read more...