Full crosspost from Laura Wood at Thinking Housewife. If you don’t follow her, you should. -nvp
NOT long ago, I bought two salvia coccinea plants. I knew from experience that the tubular, scarlet-red flowers are very attractive to hummingbirds.
I have had this variety before, but never ones so breathtakingly gorgeous. The blossoms on the vertical stems were so huge they weighed down the slender, green supports. They were deep red. I imagined a whole summer with these superior specimens and with happy hummingbirds. I put the plants in a new wooden planter and fertilized them. Then, I thought, “Maybe just a little more.”
I wanted so eagerly that these heavenly plants retain their spectacular blooms — and so I did it. I used more fertilizer than I normally would.
Since then, those first flowers have expired, replaced by ones that are shriveled, have tiny black spots and do not open. And these are usually such easy plants to grow!
I blew it. I loved them too much.
It’s a familiar experience. I’ve been around this block before. I’ve sung this tune before. I’ve waved this flag more than once.
Love is such a good thing, you would think more would always be better. But it’s not. We can love too much. We can love an idea too much. We can love an object too much. We can love a person too much.
In the case of an idea, we may become over-enthusiastic and impractical — a crusader or utopian fanatic instead of a realist. With an over-loved object, we are dragged down to earth, not elevated by the nobility we crave to possess. It’s possible even to love one’s country or one’s people too much and fail to place them in the long sweep of history.
All kinds of problems result from loving another person too much: unrealistic expectations, being the most common. We may lose our independence of judgement and drift away from our very being. I once knew a woman who loved her father very much. She loved him enough to tell him the truth. He ended up disinheriting her, and she lived out her days in poverty. Had she loved him too much? I know a man who gave a young woman everything she wanted, delaying their wedding for years because she wanted a certain kind of event. She left him a few months after their big party. He had definitely loved her too much.
For some people, loving too much can be so painful, they may give up loving at all. Goodbye, and done with that.
Obsession destroys. The worst kind of excess, of course, is loving one’s self too much. Excessive self-love is so common it’s fair to call it a universal experience. How many idols can a single human being erect in a lifetime? More than we can count. Some are such minor deities; others are destroying, rampaging gods, leaving nothing behind but tawdry and false admiration.
There is only one thing in this vale of tears we can’t love too much. And that is God…
We can love him in the wrong way, but never too much. A scrupulous person loves God in the wrong way, failing to understand that God knows we live in this world and can only do so much. A sentimentalist loves God in an overly-emotional or an entirely emotional way. But feeling is not more important than simple obedience. It is possible to love God well with very little sentiment and even through the deliberate mortification of our feelings. It may be that our fondest consolations must go.
Those red flowers would be so impressive and patriotic this beautiful July Fourth Day. Drat. I am reminded in this trivial matter of my own limits once again. Must I play this record so many times? And you, dear fellow patriot?
I am reminded that in the end, there is only one thing we can never love too much.
I must register the utterly groundless opinion that it is not loving too much but instead loving proportionately too much, in relation to the love one has for other things. Other people.
Proper proportionality – Right Order – is one facet of Logos.
I think that’s precisely the point she was making.
I think love in this world fails because people are self-interested. They love so that they may gain something, whether gratification of feelings/desires or money.
This means the only being worthy of selfless love before death is God. People have to be scrubbed clean with the fires of purgatory first.
Selfless love is wanting what’s best for someone. I don’t have to die and go be scrubbed by fire in Purgatory to do that. It isn’t required of me to like the person….only love him/her. There’s no self interest in that kind of love.
Didn’t the authorix just say that there is something like too much love? Most people need to be cleaned from living in this world to either receive it or give it.
When it comes right down to it, love is a decision. Understand that, first and foremost.
And I seriously doubt anyone loves their enemies at the same time that they will to send them to consecration camps for minor offenses and without due process. But here we are.
What is a “consecration camp”? Please explain.
A place where Leo and all the Catholic bishops should be kept and fed on bread and water until they carry out Our Lady’s request vis à vis Russia?
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the perfect benchmark for Love! Everything else is just a psychological/physiological exercise with a correlating tattoo on your forehead stating “WIIFM”… What’s in it for me. Now excuse me while I go and try to was my face!