Love Hard, Forgive Harder

 Good advice can come from unusual places.

Last week my friends Joe and Barbara sponsored a charitable fund-raising event at a Comedy Club in Hermosa Beach, California, which, during rush hour, is a ninety-minute drive from my office.  They were surprised that I showed up, but I like to support my friends.

Dinner at the Club was surprisingly excellent, and I laughed out loud at the four opening acts.

The headliner was a woman in her 50’s who started slow but finished fast.  Toward the end of her 50-minute monologue, after talking a lot about relationships and her three divorces, she said, “I’m going to end with advice on how to live.”

Her advice made an impression.  It was:

1. Love Hard.
2. Forgive Harder.

I emphatically agree.  Assuming that I have only one life to live I want to make the most of it.  I’ve found that there is only one way to reap the greatest reward in life, and that is to take the greatest risk.  In the movie, ‘I Bought a Zoo,” Matt Damon is a father restarting his life after his wife dies.  Damon’s 15-year-old son likes a girl, but is afraid to reveal his feelings.  Damon’s fatherly advice, after telling his son how he met his mother at a coffee shop, is simply this.  “You know, sometimes what you need is twenty seconds of insane courage.”

And once I’ve taken the risk and started a relationship, I always want to improve it, to learn more about the other person and share myself more deeply.

I keep in mind the definition of love by the Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke who lived from 1875 through 1926.  He said, “Love consists in this, that two solitudes know, and touch, and protect each other.”

Rilke also wrote, “For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

Love Hard.

The comedian’s second admonition, Forgive Harder, may be even more difficult to achieve than the first.  As the saying goes, “To err is human, NOT to forgive is even more human.”

Helen, a friend of mine, recently left her husband of twenty-five years. “He was angry with me for the last twenty years about a misunderstanding which happened the day our son was born.”

Twenty years is a long time to hold a grudge, even if it is about something which is really important.  Especially if it is about something which is really important.

When I don’t get something I want from someone, or when I do get something I don’t want, I feel my body shifting into anger mode.  That is normal, natural, and probably a survival skill.  If I hold on to that anger, however, I create a coldness in that relationship which, after two years, or twenty, is certain to result in personal permafrost. Holding onto anger isn’t healthy for the relationship or the individual. But the physical and psychological benefits of forgiveness have been well documented. Last Saturday evening it warmed my heart to see Roger and Glenda, two friends who divorced thirty years ago, tenderly embrace each other in a local restaurant.

If you want to live your life fully, take the comedian’s advice.

Love Hard.

Forgive Harder.

And support your friends when they ask for your help.

Alan