Episode 3.4: The Trouble with Love

The first section of the reading material for this class was titled Das Elend des Liebesgebotes. Elend means misery and Liebesgebot is the commandment to love, but I’d translate the heading more like “the trouble with love.”

So at least one of the troubles with love is that I am still not clear what the trouble with love is. What I thought I read was that love sounds great on paper and in sermons: love yourself, love God, love your neighbor, build bridges not walls, work towards peace, and so on. Super. But in practice, it’s not much to stand on: the verb “to love” encompasses a huge range of different, and even contradictory, actions, to the point that the command “love!” (by itself, anyway) may only elicit the response, “but how??”

This was on the weekly test, and when I proudly (if haltingly and with dreadful grammar, as usual) regurgitated what I had read, the instructor said: nope, totally wrong. The trouble with love is that you can love all day and all night and with your whole heart, but you can’t make anyone else do it. Act with love, and everyone will just walk all over you.

Normally I’m unsurprised to be told that I’ve missed something – reading in German is like listening to a conversation under water, it’s all very fuzzy – but I truly didn’t get that. Let’s say, maybe, that there’s more than one problem with love…?

The rest of this lesson dealt with the basic social competencies that allow us to interact with other humans:
a.     Self-image and self-presentation
b.     Ability to imagine yourself in the other person’s role (social empathy)
c.     Ability to separate people (both yourself and others) from their societal roles
d.     Ability to tolerate ambiguity
e.     Imagination and curiosity about the other person’s feelings (ethical empathy)

This discussion was accompanied by the following somewhat impenetrable graphic, which made me giggle so here it is for you too:

Your guess is as good as mine.

The plus sign, for example, indicates ethical empathy…got it??

This was another one where I was sort of stumped at first, but found myself thinking about it as the weeks went on. I’m a disaster in the area of self-image, and probably as a result of that I have real anxiety around social roles - but I like to think I’m pretty cool with ambiguity. The typical Swiss person is almost the opposite, very grounded and very confident in their social role(s) but super twitchy around ambiguity. That’s why all the trains run on time here! In support of this observation I submit this test my daughter brought home from school. She was supposed to draw the axes of symmetry through each of the shapes. The teacher’s comment at the top is, “points deducted for inaccuracies.” Can you find them?

"UNGENAUIGKEITEN!" Oh, if this teacher were ever to see our apartment...