Letter to my Children: Love vs Ignorance
/Dear Beloveds,
One morning on our drive to school I took a break from exclaiming over the rose fingered snow covered mountains. “Okay kids, I want to share something with you that really resonated with your Momma. I was listening to Josh from The Emerald* interviewing a professor, Dr. Omid Safi. The professor said that in his religion, the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. I think this is so so soooo true and I wanted to talk about it.”
Quiet in the car.
Scaffold Corinna. “Okay, so when you love someone what do you do?”
“Ummmm, you say nice things?”
“Sure, okay.”
“You are kind to them?”
“Yeah, when you love someone you notice them. You pay attention to them. You are curious about their thoughts and ideas and reactions. You want to know about all about them and you want them to be the best version of themselves. You want them to be seen and heard and held and cared for. So when you don’t do those things you are indifferent. You don’t pay attention, you aren’t curious, you don’t care about them. Does that make sense?”
“Sure.”
“Can you see why the opposite of love is not hate? Hate you actually have to think about the person enough to send them energy. Indifference you don’t even bother to concern yourself with them - you are totally detached and distanced from the other.”
Corinna, they are slipping away. You can feel it. Veer away and come back.
“Today is a big day for both of you. Dragon, you are heading to Howe Caverns. Bean, you have visitors from your performance last night staying all day?”
“Just in the morning…”
After a few minutes of this, I circled back.
“Okay my loves, what is the opposite of love.”
Dragon piped up, “Ummmm. Is it ignorance?”
“Ummm, well, I was going for indifference - but ignorance might work. Why did you say that?”
“Well, when you ignore someone you are not paying attention to them. So I thought ignorance because that has ignore in it.”
HOLY MOLY
“My beautiful boy, say that to me again.”
“When you ignore someone you don’t care about them so that is the opposite of love.”
I became very excited about this. “Dragon, I had never never grokked consciously that ignorance has ignore in it. Wow wow wow.”
Wow.
Ignore and ignorance both have within them gno- as in gnosis “to know/be aware.” Whereas I understand the connotations of ignorance as passive and the connotation of indifference as active - the whole shebang switches I remember that ignorance has ignore in it.
Why?
Because suddenly I am back to every time I have willfully ignored someone else. And I cringe to write this sentence. Your Momma was taught, growing in DC, that it was impolite to stare at homeless people. In my fecund brain that directive morphed into it is better to ignore.**
Willfully ignoring someone is the opposite of love. And the other person is me.
That woman.
That man.
Those children are me.
I am demean, degrade, and dehumanize myself when I ignore.
Children, learn from my mistakes. Please.
Do not ignore suffering. Do not be indifferent to the hand held over your table of plenty.
Love.
* Oh Justice March 2024
** I am sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you. Ad infinitum.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in The Book of Forgiving. “When we assault another’s humanity, we assault our own humanity. Every person wants to be acknowledged and affirmed for who and what they are, a human being of infinite worth, someone with a place in the world. We can’t violate another’s dignity without violating our own. Violence, whether in words or deeds, only begets more violence.”
