A thought occurred to me this evening. I hope I can put it into words.

It involves a memory. On the way home on the bus, some words from long ago came back to me. I recalled them exactly, but could not recall who said them.

I have been blessed with a good memory. Think, I told myself. My memory works contextually. The words, I knew, were said by a male of my acquaintance. Not by someone in my immediate family or by a relative.

The words, spoken long ago, were as follows: “You are among those who love you.”

Why did they come back to me? Because of a feeling I have been having over the past couple of days, or perhaps the past week, of being loved and cherished by those closest to me, of being suffused with love from others. Of basking in the warmth of and feeling enveloped by it.

Did a former boss say this? A coworker? I doubted it. A friend? Did not seem to be the case.

Then, as is usually the case with an effort at recall, it came back to me. The words were spoken to me by my boss at Columbia University, a dean, when I was working there many years ago. I was his administrative assistant.

My boss was gay, which was common among academia, but he was not openly gay. It was a time when being openly gay could be damaging to one’s career. He was discreet and reticent about his personal life, yet we had a close relationship in the office and I got to know him well. He was an emotive person, who openly shared his daily trials and work frustrations with me, and his likes and dislikes. We had rapport on an intellectual level from the get go.

His remark did not amount to saying that he had erotic feelings towards me.

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Putting his remark into a larger context today, remembering and reflecting upon it, it occurred to me — something that I have thought about occasionally — that people want to love and be loved. Not just to have love affairs and intimate relationships, or to be loved by spouse or family. Not solely or exclusively this. But to love others and be loved in return. By others, I guess one could say I mean to love humanity. Maybe it’s not always love; it’s more like affection. But people, excluding perhaps psychopaths and haters, want to express and share affection towards other people and from them in return. Even including people they don’t know well. I experience this all the time. Living in a big, supposedly impersonal city. I go into a store or office or cross paths with someone, and they want to make me feel liked, and to show that they took pleasure in meeting me, if only in passing.

So that, I would conclude, the default, the human condition, is to want to love or at least to be affectionate as well as appreciative. Not to dislike or hate. The latter is an aberration.

— Roger W. Smith

    January 2019

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O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human
soul is capable of generating and emitting in steady and
limitless floods.

— Walt Whitman, “A Song of Joys”