Genuine Loving: “Installing Love”

The other day while at the gym, a friend and I were talking about my contemporary romance novels. She asked if “struggling with trusting whether or not someone’s love for you is genuine” is a phenomenon I purposefully built into my novels. “Yes,” I replied with a broadening smile. “You sure do read between the lines well don’t you?!”

I was truly touched when she talked about how Sheila (in My Sweetpea: Seven Years and Seven Days) struggled with the in-genuineness of her husband’s love for her prior to their divorce, how Marcia (in Fear of Feeling Loved) became so scared when she started to experience Jack’s love of her to truly be genuine, and how Diane (in If Ever Again… It’ll be for Love) subconsciously tried to push Michael away because she couldn’t trust his love for her. Needless to say, my friend’s insights into the characters in my books were spot on.

While we were talking about the many issues surrounding love and the (in-)genuineness of love, I told her about a cute bogus e-mail exchange I had included in my pop-psych book, Living Life, Anyway. After I showed it to her, she said, “You need to share that with your friends via your blog.” As you will see I agreed with her.

Although the formatting may be a little off, the following is from pages 134-137 of my self-help book, Living Life, Anyway:

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There are numerous issues, facets, and considerations of love and loving, particularly when aspects of loving are related to genuine interpersonal loving relationships. To illustrate this postulate, I share with you the following piece, “Installing Love,” that a friend e-mailed to me. Basically, it is a creative and entertaining bogus e-mail exchange between a Customer (Cust.) and a computer company’s Customer Service Representative (Rep.). Within it there are numerous figurative imputations that directly and indirectly address the constructs of love and loving, especially their important relatedness to genuineness.

Installing Love

Rep.: Can you install LOVE?

Cust.: I can do that. I'm not very technical, but I think I am ready to install now. What do I do first?

Rep.: The first step is to open your HEART. Have you located your HEART ma'am?

Cust.: Yes I have, but there are several programs running right now. Is it okay to install while they are running?

Rep.: What programs are running ma'am?

Cust.: Let me see....I have PASTHURT.EXE, LOWESTEEM.EXE, GRUDGE.EXE, and RESENTMENT.COM running right now.

Rep.: No problem. LOVE will automatically erase PASTHURT.EXE from your current operating system. It may remain in your permanent memory, but it will no longer disrupt other programs. LOVE will eventually overwrite LOWESTEEM.EXE with a module of its own called HIGHESTEEM.EXE. However, you have to completely turn off GRUDGE.EXE and RESENTMENT.COM. Those programs prevent LOVE from being properly installed. Can you turn those off ma'am?

Cust.: I don't know how to turn them off. Can you tell me how?

Rep.: My pleasure. Go to your Start menu and invoke FORGIVENESS.EXE. Do this as many times as necessary until GRUDGE.EXE and RESENTMENT.COM have been completely erased.

Cust.: Okay, I'm done. LOVE has started installing itself automatically. Is that normal?

Rep.: Yes it is. You should receive a message that says it will reinstall for the life of your HEART. Do you see that message?

Cust.: Yes I do. Is it completely installed?

Rep.: Yes, but remember that you have only the base program. You need to begin connecting to other HEARTS in order to get the upgrades.

Cust.: Oops...I have an error message already. What should I do?

Rep.: What does the message say?

Cust.: It says "ERROR 412 ‑ PROGRAM NOT RUN ON INTERNAL COMPONENTS". What does that mean?

Rep.: Don't worry ma'am, that's a common problem. It means that the LOVE program is set up to run on external HEARTS but has not yet been run on your HEART. It is one of those complicated programming things, but in non‑technical terms it means you have to "LOVE" your own machine before it can "LOVE" others.

Cust.: So what should I do?

Rep.: Can you find the directory called "SELF‑ACCEPTANCE"?

Cust.: Yes, I have it.

Rep.: Excellent, you are getting good at this.

Cust.: Thank you.

Rep.: You're welcome. Click on the following files and then copy them to the "MYHEART" directory: FORGIVESELF.DOC, SELFESTEEM.TXT, REALIZEWORTH.TXT, and GOODNESS.DOC. The system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin patching any faulty programming. Also, you need to delete SELFCRITIC.EXE from all directories, and then empty your recycle bin afterwards to make sure it is completely gone and never comes back.

Cust.: Got it. Hey! My HEART is filling up with really neat files. SMILE.MPG is playing on my monitor right now and it shows that WARMTH.COM, PEACE.EXE, and CONTENTMENT.COM are copying themselves all over my HEART!

Rep.: Then LOVE is installed and running. You should be able to handle it from here. One more thing before I go...

Cust.: Yes?

Rep.: LOVE is freeware. Be sure to give it and its various modules to everybody you meet. They will in turn share it with other people and they will return some really neat modules back to you.

Cust.: I will. Thank you for your help.

I trust that you not only further appreciated the ubiquitous purveyance of the construct of genuineness from this piece, but that you enjoyed it as well. (It also is a rather nice segue for the next chapter on living life, lovingly.)

In conclusion, living life genuinely, being real and authentic, will reap many rewards and benefits– the most important, of course, being a good and happy life. Furthermore, it must be remembered that living life genuinely is not only a way of life – it is a way of being – with yourself, with others, and with life itself.

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I hope you enjoyed it!

Bill