Acts of love and feelings of bitteness

One of the things I've found so difficult in the whole process of loving is that it has to be displayed as well as done. I mean, not only are you expected to be a loving person in this world, but you're expected to prove that you are as well, and that business of proving it so often gets in the way of the actual getting on with being a loving person.

Consequently, I think many people get tied up with the image of being a loving person, and find themselves absolutely swamped with the need to be seen as such. Then, of course, are the ones who are so tied up with needing to be seen that way that they build resentments up all the while. I used to do that, and it led me to becoming bitter.

Many people choose to be kind and good, I think, not because they understand the principle behind it, in that it's the most sensible and excellent way to go about things, but because they get so attached to the need to be seen as "one of the good people". And I really believe that once the image of being "a kind person" is there, the duty to carry on being so becomes a burden. The person then plays a role, rather than simply being a person who has done good things.

That's what's so interesting about the illusion of reputation. A person may spend his or her life building up a reputation of being some kind of person who does this or that, just for the power that illusion holds over people. How many politicians fight desperately behind the scenes to be seen as the one who's the really honest, straighforward and moral one, when in fact they're hiding the ordinary humanity that makes up who and what they really are, deep down inside.

Yet the people who just carry on their honest, truthful and caring business might get bypassed, and disenfanchised, ignored and unappreciated, all the time seeking the same adoration and respect, fame and public honour.

Yet what are any of those things without self esteem? When a person is dependent on needing to be seen as this or that, what good does that do him? All he's ever doing is playing a role, rather than being real.

The truth of loving acts is that they make no demands. A loving act that has an agenda is no loving act at all. To win the love and approval of people by being seen as loving is meaningless. Only the act is important. And so once the act is done, then that's it. It's just a loving act, done by someone for someone else.

Of course it has value. But the bizarre competitiveness as having to need to be seen as someone lovely or kind or good is as crazy sometimes as the competitevness between sportsmen. And the image becomes something that has to be honed and kept and never allowed to be whatever it needs to be. Then, seeming becomes believing, and the very heart of the matter is lost.

Shame, that.