What is Love?
by Charles C. Hall, Ed.D
"Love others as thyself."

- Leviticus

Mohaandas Gandhi answers that question in his autobiography. He says the pivotal experience of his life occurred as a youth who confessed to his father that he had stolen money for food and cigarettes.

"... pearl drops trickled down his cheeks ... I also cried, I could see my father's agony. These pearl drops of love cleansed my heart. Only he who has experienced such love can know what it is ... That was one object lesson of love to me. When such love becomes allembracing, it transforms everything else."

Gandhi's love for the outcasts of India could be recognized by everyone but the British who held India as a crown colony. His was the drive and unequaled patience that crumbled the British stranglehold over India. Had it not been for Gandhi, the various factions of Hindi and Muslim would have devolved into a bloody civil war. By his unconditional love of both did he succeed in breaking the power of Empire. His assassin was a relative, as was Rabin's in Israel.

I read Gandhi's autobiography many years ago as I was growing into who I wanted to be. He was revered the world over for his faith in the power of love and forgiveness of the foibles of others. He was a person who practiced his love for all humanity.

Socrates was another monumental exponent of the love of learning, wisdom, civility and character to which all should aspire. He strove mightily to save Ancient Greece from becoming the rogue state which eventually filled it. He said, "Wisdom is the most beautiful thing and love is of the beautiful. "

The ruling powers in Greece condemned Socrates to death out of their mistaken fears that he was corrupting Athens' youth who, they said, would overthrow their exalted positions of power. What Socrates was doing was asking the citizens of Athens to doubt and question the basic philosophical tenets of life. He primarily asked questions rather than gave answers. Socrates (470-399 BC) said that no time in his life could he recall that he was not in love ... "with the search for wisdom, civility, and humanity."

When imprisoned, his friends attempted to advise him to reject his teachings, which he adamantly re- fused to do because he said, "...that would be a complete rejection of his self as a human being," and he took the hemlock with an inner conviction that his was the sacrifice he was willing to make as the highest for himself and his friends. Athens fell. Greece fell. Only Socrates is revered to this day rather then those who condemned him.

Perhaps, in the jaded atmosphere of the present, we sometimes forget that we and people over the entire planet have the basic need to love and be loved. We each have - or, have had - a mother and father who watched over us as infants. Without their tender care, where would we be today? Unfortunately, some parents do not understand the basics of parenting. Tragically, this leads to severe abuse, and, all too often, death of an innocent child. Should they survive, their lives may be wasted as they engage in lawless acts which destroys families and the larger society.

Tsunesuburo Makiguchi (Soonesu buro Maki-guchi), 1871- 1944, a renowned Japanese philosopher, was born into extreme poverty in a rural hamlet of northern Japan. His parents abandoned him at a tender age and left him to shift for himself. He had scant hope of ever going to school. A fellow worker recognized that Makiguchi had the potential to be a scholar and invested in him. Makiguchi became a stellar student, and upon graduation, trained to be a professional educator. He disagreed with the official curriculum which taught that all students were to be trained in the militaristic mold of the Samuari warrior. As predicted, he was ostrasized for not following official protocol.

Makiguchi asserted that formal education should "... never separate the world of learning from the world at large. All children, he said, ... are deserving of the chance to realize their potential, and are equally capable of becoming exceptional learners ... even though they may be covered with dust and dirt, the brilliant light of life shines through their soiled clothes."

Makiguchi became a pariah among his peers for his revolutionary methods of teaching. He believed "... that the individual learner, not the school is the center of the learning process." Also, that the educational process itself must extend far outside the confines of the classroom." (He must have read the teachings of John Dewey.)

Makiguchi was another of the world's men in the mold of Gandhi and Socrates. He taught, lived and exemplified the love of learning, the search for wisdom, the beauty of which makes life one of harmony and excitement. Even though his abandonment at an early age by his parents, he held, firmly, that fathers are to be deified in personal shrines to them. "Without a father, I would be nothing, " he believed.

At some point in one's life, one must be taught, or, learn on one's own that "...there but for the grace of God go I." Each of us struggles with existential questions such as "Who am I?"; "Why am I here?"; "What is my mission?"; "How can I become whom I aspire to be as a person of worth?" One's struggles, through trial and error, deliver him to finding his basic mission.

Shakespeare put it clearly when he penned, "There is a tide in the affairs of man which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, omitted, and the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries." One's challenge in life is to prepare oneself to recognize the tide when it appears. One must needs be willing and receptive to brave the current.

When we realize that "...we are all in this together, as a human family, " we shall become more tolerant of those who are unlike ourselves. One does not learn only from those like unto oneself, but from the diversity of all humankind and natural phenomena. To seek the opinions and the opribrium of others is the mark of a true and humble scholar, a seeker of what all great men call "wisdom. "

Some things one is taught, or, has learned, are not based on fact nor truth, and must be unlearned if one desires to be a "whole person. " Therefore, a healthy sense of doubt and a questioning mind are necessary to balance one's wisdom and ability to separate the "wheat from the chaff."

Psychologists have long posited that balance and equilibrium in all things determine one's ability to become that which one cherishes - a tranquil sense of life's "valleys and mountains" which occur in each of our lives. Happiness and tranquility are byproductrs of the manner in which one conducts oneself when the unexpected occurs. Serenity is a treasured gem, found only in the "Family of Man."

So it goes . . . .