Article September 3, 2007 Issue

Love MAKES good things HAPPEN

STEPHEN POST

In a recent Sentinel Radio interview, STEPHEN POST talked about his new book, Why Good Things Happen to Good People (written with journalist Jill Neimark), and about various aspects of giving and loving. Post is a professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, and president of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love.
Here are excerpts from the interview, rearranged for print.

In my view, when we value the happiness and the security of another human being as much as or more than we value our own happiness and security, we love that person. And that's what happens with parents and children. It's what gets people down to New Orleans after Katrina. It's the kind of thing that makes great doctors out of otherwise competent medical students. It's the kind of love that is in the Golden Rule, and it's a real powerful, palpable, emotional reality in our lives. It competes every day with hatred and with fear. . . .

When people love unselfishly, they feel a kind of joy, they feel a kind of warmth . . . . There is a kind of fulfillment and a buoyancy involved in the life of love. And we don't ever want to paint a picture where love is arid, where it's dry, emaciated, and so forth. I mean, love is a gift. When we love others as ourselves, we discover a deeper self.

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