Losing Love

As a radical behaviorist, I believe that what we think of as “I” or “me” is a collection of responses, which couldn’t and wouldn’t occur without other — other people, other animals, other events outside our skin.

We aren’t taught, through our language or cultural practices, to give as much credit to “other” in the conceptualization of “I” or “me” as it deserves. We’re taught that each human skin contains a world all its own—the originator of all its privately experienced thoughts, feelings, and imaginings, and the originator (through biology, personality, or innate characteristics) of its words and actions.

It’s quite a lonely, unfulfilling conceptualization of self, the traditional Western one.

Radical Behaviorism teaches us this overemphasis on an individual self is not only flawed but impractical. Everything we do, say, think, and feel can be traced outside us. Putting the onus of experience and expression thereof inside a static, within-skin self denies the importance and impact of the variables that make us us. In our everyday lives (and in much of medicine, psychology, and neuroscience), we give far too much credit to variables that either don’t exist or merely mediate and moderate the expression of “us.”

There’s a lot to unpack from this concept. Many different ways it can be applied, many levels of application….

Today, or for now, I thought I would try to unpack this concept as it relates to losing love.

---

This is my first post for this publication, and, honestly, I imagined it’d be different. I thought about backing up, giving you an introduction, telling you about my informal and formal experiences with Eastern philosophy — my yoga teacher trainings or meditation certifications. My practice and informal studies. My years of yoga practice, side-interests in Ramana Maharshi and Alan Watts, Veda and Vedanta, astrology and new-age spirituality, and/or personal encounters with the metaphysical.

Alternatively, I have an essay about my views on the afterlife that I was going to share…

But, here I am, 6 AM on a Monday, wading in differently than I’d planned. This is more familiar to me, ditching plans for the unexpected.

Suffice it to say, my expertise in Radical Behaviorism far exceeds my expertise in spirituality (will share my disclaimers another day), but I’m not going to list my qualifications here.

For today, just this. Words. A bit scattered, with hints of wisdom. Symbolic of “me.”

---

The quote below, by Jiddu Krishnamurti, resonated today because the impending loss of a loved one is overshadowing my life at present.

Though it’s a familiar feeling, having lost so many loved ones, it is difficult and all-encompassing. This quote made me “zoom out” and think of how the loss of life is similar to losing other types of love, and how it relates to self love.

"The loneliness, bleakness and wretchedness you feel without the person you love existed before you fell in love. What you call love is merely stimulation, the temporary covering-up of your emptiness. You escaped from loneliness through a person, used this person to cover it up. Your problem is not this relationship, but rather it is the problem of your own emptiness. Escape is very dangerous because, like a drug, it hides the real problem. It is because you have no love inside you that you continually look for love to fill you from the outside. This lack of love is your loneliness, and when you see the truth of this, you will never again try to fill it with things and people from outside."

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I find this quote relevant to grief, romantic and platonic love, self-love, and unrequited love. “Loving” and “being in love” is comprised of various forms of behavior. None of it originates inside us, but we seem to feel it there, whether it’s returned or not.

When that behavior has nowhere to go, and/or it’s not returned in the ways we expect or are conditioned to differentially value, we suffer. Whether that suffering was a baseline state (and we loved for the escape it provided), or whether the suffering is from the loss itself matters not. The functional outcome is the same: Discontent.

We feel loss, as if love was cast out, never to be returned. The helpful thing Radical Behaviorism adds, IMHO, is the understanding that love was “just” behavior and its effects. It was special, but not because of its form: Because of what it did for us. Not just me. Not just them. Us. Timeless, eternal, not-trapped-inside-our-skin us.

We impose the suffering on ourselves. Knowing this doesn’t make it easier, but knowing we are just us, we are them, too, helps. (This will be the theme of an upcoming essay on the afterlife.)

A sunset that reminds me of my soon-to-be-gone loved one. Memories—something we think of as stored in our brain—are actually stored outside our skin and mediated by the organs inside it. Again, we are not our body.

Reflection or Journal Prompt

Can you absorb the love you cast out for other, when unreturned, as a love for self? Are these repertoires one in the same, behaviorally? If not, how not — how are the responses and reinforcers different? Do the dimensions of their differences truly matter, or are there consistencies among them? Where does the love we emit go, if not back to self, and do the echoes have to be painful?

Thank you for reading. I hope you got something from this electric smattering of words. If not, they’ll come back to me, and I’ll love them all the same.

Peace, love, and stimulus control,

Jennifer