Learning About Love

Learning About Love from Leo Buscaglia

Filling the theater with an aura of perfect joy, hundreds of people clap to express the happiness of their uplifted souls. They wait patiently yet eagerly to embrace the messenger of their lively evening. Hearts bursting with renewed forgiveness for themselves and the pain of their own pasts, they wait with anticipation to for their chance to hug this spirited and passionate man. Palpable energy of love flows through each person, their smiles reflecting their hearts, chests light with relief, eyes moist with tears from laughter and emotion. Where were they before all this? Where had their joy been hiding all this time? Waiting to be released from their self-imposed captivity through this message of love. Amazing. It was so easy. They hug. Strong, firm yet and gentle, lingering and reassuring. For some, a feast of human contact after a lifetime of emotional drought. A pause. Loving eyes, kind words. “You are worth my time to stay here and hug you. You are loved. You are worthy of love.” They feel the chains slip away. Feeling light. Feeling released. Floating. Happiness. Love.

Being hugged by Leo Buscaglia was one of the greatest joys experienced by his lecture attendees, students, friends, acquaintances, strangers, and people all over the world. Buscaglia was a University of Southern California professor who became so moved by the suicide of one of his students that he devoted himself to teaching a non-credit class called “Love 1A”. He fervently embraced the action of loving his students, talking about love with them, teaching them how to love others, and how to love themselves. In his book Living, Loving, & Learning, Buscaglia says, “Hug yourself, you sweet old thing! Sure you’re screwed up, and sometimes you do dumb things and you forget that you are a human being, but the most wonderful thing about you is that no matter where you are, you have potential to grow. You are just starting” (p. 77)

How amazing would your life be to love so fully and boldly as Buscaglia exhorted us to do? What if you loved yourself so wonderfully that you amazed yourself? What if you thought of yourself as the glorious person that you really are?

Buscaglia was born in Los Angeles to Italian immigrant parents and grew up in a household where love abounded with hugs and no one ever left the house without kissing Mama. The stories that Buscaglia told about Mama! Life was lived with curiosity, wonder, abundance, and demonstrative love. Even when the family had little to eat or few provisions for the comforts of life, there was always enough to go around. A time of hardship was a time to celebrate and remember happier times. Mama had the most positive attitude that her son had ever seen in his whole life. Just like the way Viktor Frankl talked about finding meaning in life from triumph over tragedy, Mama Buscaglia found her will to meaning by celebrating life at all times. A hard day didn’t mean sitting around and complaining but cooking up a pot of pasta and inviting friends over. What a way to celebrate life!

With alacrity and conviction, Buscaglia urged us to love ourselves especially because of our imperfections, and in spite of any hardships or pain that we have experienced. We can choose joy! We can choose to believe in ourselves. Buscaglia told us to hug ourselves and love ourselves through our imperfections since they are really just a small part of us anyway.

Forgiveness

What are you holding on to? According to Buscaglia, forgiveness means to set down the burden of carrying around anger, sadness, resentment, and pain and moving forward with your life. Once you forgive others and forgive yourself, you free yourself to enjoy life today. You can change sadness into joy. Don’t miss the joy of the moment right now!

Everyone has had some kind of painful event happen in their past. It happens before we know it’s going to happen, and suddenly the deed is done and we’re hurt. If you carry around the pain, then it comes between you and what you desire for yourself to be. If you allow yourself to remain stuck in the pain of the past, you lose yourself to it. If you free yourself from the pain of the past, you become yourself again.

Joy

Buscaglia told us to experience joy now. Find it in the simplest of things around you. Feel joy. Smell it. Taste it. Touch it. Joy is in taking a breath and being alive, smelling a flower, seeing your reflection when you look into the eyes of your child. If you have been too busy to experience joy, you are missing out on living. Break out of the prison of your routine and free yourself to experience joy.

Look for different ways to handle disappointments in order to feel better. Stop being self-destructive and consider alternative ways to respond to problems. Measure your self-worth against what you believe is true for yourself, and value yourself. Love yourself and your perceived flaws. The opposite of love is not hate but apathy. Do not be apathetic about your life. Grab your life and kiss it!

You Matter

Give love freely without expectation, just as a flower blooms because it must, not because anyone is watching it. The purpose of life is to love and be loved and to have made some mark that you were here….that the world was different because you were in it. Each person deserves to be treated as an individual, as a beautiful flower that grows and blooms toward its own greater will to meaning.

Look toward the higher order of love and purpose in life. Give up fighting about small things that are of a lower order and compromise in order to gain something of greater love and purpose. Share love and joy with others, laugh and be light.

Love and Meaning

Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist who created logotherapy and survived many years in Nazi concentration camps, wrote Man’s Search for Meaning. He taught the world that life’s meaning can be found in experiencing the uniqueness of another human being and loving that person fully. Like Frankl, Buscaglia taught us to love ourselves fully and experience the joy of loving everyone around us. The meaning of life is in loving yourself and loving the moment you are experiencing. People, children, nature, the air we breathe, the leaves that blow in the breeze and the bare trees of winter, the sun on your face and the darkness of shadows. Frankl and Buscaglia both tell us that death serves to remind us of the transitory nature of life. Life must be lived now, in each moment, and meaning found in the love of that moment. We must reach out beyond ourselves and find meaning in our own purpose by following our gifts and talents, by not just performing a task or doing a job but, through that task or job, connect with the higher purpose of serving others for the greater good of loving mankind.

Imagine if you were the messenger of love to those around you in your own life. See your life as Buscaglia’s stage, and moving others to tears with your message of love and meaning. How many people in your own life stand before you each day? Who have you inspired? Hugged? Experienced and loved fully? When have you looked into the eyes of a child, a friend, a loved one, a stranger, and communicated a message of love, worth, and value to that person? Allow you heart to be filled with love, feel renewed and hopeful once again about your own life, and your own capacity to love others, especially to love yourself. Be a passionate communicator of love to the people in your life and the world around you. Experience the powerful connection of love and meaning in your life!

Born for Love: Reflections on Loving, Leo Buscaglia, 1992, Random House: New York