By Patricia Lee Sharpe
I’ve just seen Nina Paley’s very clever multi-media feature film Sita Sings the Blues, the perfect antidote for those who think unconditional love is a good thing. Sita is the wife of Rama, king of Ayodhya and incarnation of Vishnu. She has been abducted by Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, and Ram must bring her back, if only to protect his own honor. Rescued, an ecstatic Sita declares that she has been—um—loyal to Ram. Still, Ram will not take her back to wife, even after an apparently redemptive trial by fire, because the people continue to doubt her—um—loyalty.
Needless to say, the Ramayana, not my favorite Indian epic.
Paley’s clever (I should say jazzy) concept is that Sita should express the pain of rejection by singing torch songs about her love and longing for the man who done her wrong. This juxtaposition ennobles the torch singer and humanizes the Indian icon. Either way the film shows very clearly who usually benefits from unconditional love in traditional societies. Men can do no wrong. Women must forgive and forgive and forgive. And if they die, so much the better.
As I left the cinema, I got to thinking of the unconditional love cliché that’s thrown around so glibly these days. "Look at a dog," people say. "A dog loves its master/mistress no matter what. Why can’t we people love that way? Why do we humans always put conditions on love?"
Ahem. Have you ever seen an unloved dog licking the hand that refused to pet it? Have you seen a maltreated dog skulking around the house or yard with its tail between its legs—and I don’t mean a homeless stray here? Have you seen the confusion and fear in its eyes, the way it stands with its head bowed begging for a sign of affection?
This is what happens with some abused women. They apologize for “earning” a beating. Offered a way out, they cling to abusive partners. “But I love him,” they say.
Now that has got to be unconditional love, and who wants it? Who wants to be Sita?
“Ah,” says someone, “the key is mutuality. When unconditional love is mutual, it’s fine.” Yes, such love would be fine, but it wouldn’t be unconditional if mutuality is required.
“Well,” says someone else, “how about a mother’s love for her children. Surely that’s unconditional or should be.” Hmmmm. What about the elderly mother whose son or daughter never visits? What a painful love that must be. Should it be clung to? What about the indulgent parental love that turns a kid into a selfish, egotistical, spoiled, tyrannical brat? Psychologists make a distinction between condemning the person and condemning the behavior. But what if the ugly behavior never stops? We might, of course, blame the mother—or the father. Better parenting might have produced a nicer child or adult. Yet many other factors play a role in shaping character and personality. The cause and effect equation isn’t so neat. Is there ever a time when a parent can be forgiven for “disinheriting” a child on any level? At some point, are mutuality and mutual obligation between the generations required if love is to continue? When does deep generous love become stupid love?
Meanwhile, parenting, if not all powerful, is also not inconsequential. Maybe if parents had been a bit less unconditional about loving their offspring over these many permissive decades, the egoists who have ruined our economy might have run their companies responsibly and shared the wealth with their employees instead of buying $50,000,000 mansions and other such gewgaws for themselves. These guys should have been slapped down a long time ago, but the regulators and those who wrote the regulations were overly permissive parents, too.
This is no time for an exhaustive treatise on love, but let me raise one more example of unconditional love that frequently gets out of hand. It’s love of country. Patriotism. The my-country-right-or-wrong syndrome. The nice thing about democracy is that you don’t have to settle for love, loyalty and singing the blues. You can change things, right the wrongs, make the country worth loving again. I hope that Barak Obama remembers that the country fell in love with him because he promised change, not endless bipartisan love without mutuality.