Learning to Love: Transmutaion

L´earning to Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

 Transmutation

Life’s a bugger (that´s an understatement!). Nobody ever teaches us to handle the hardships we encounter, so we are ill-prepared for difficulty. Yet, it is unavoidable.
By nature, everything tends towards disorder, dissolution and disintegration. This is called ‘enthropy’, a basic principle of Physics. To revert it, we must dispense effort and energy. In life, this process of continual re-creation stems from Love. The very desire to change this destructive principle and transform it into order and re-construction requires loving. This is transmutation (lat: trans-through; mutare- change). The cost is self-sacrifice. We must counteract egoism and selfishness to re-construct life and love.
Mothers are perfect examples of this. Take pregnancy. They gain 11 kgs, and duplicate bodily functions, pumping up to 40% more blood, to have a baby. They normally postpone personal satisfaction till their caring for others is done and often, are willing to give their lives up, for their loved ones.

Approximately, a third of the population has this intrinsic selflessness, with a natural tendency to care and help others. Their protective factors give them a resilience that makes them resistant to risk. As Salvador Diaz Mirón says, in his poem ‘A Gloria’,  “They fly over swamps without soiling their plumage”. It is they who carry, not only the responsibility of their own personal welfare, but the weight of those who damage themselves and others. So some of us come to learn and try to ‘get it right’, while others come to help. Having been helped, myself, over, and over again, I know the need we all have for each other.

Chaos cannot be re-created with dependability without this help.
Transmuting dis-order into order requires the desire to help others, a basic principle of love. Caring enough to be there for others, at the cost of dispensing one´s own selfishness is the first step. Feeling their pain and keeping them company as we walk alongside others, sharing their lives’ path, is a second step. Holding their hand when asked for help, is the third. Thus, the pain of living becomes an opportunity to hurt together in love.
Transmutation is not about changing or resisting reality. It is about transforming the experience of pain into love.