My Sunday Thought for January 10, 2016: Leo

Felice Leonardo "Leo" Buscaglia PhD (1924-1998)
"Dr. Love"

Felice Leonardo Buscaglia was born in Los Angeles, CA on March 31, 1924 into a family of Italian immigrants. He spent his early childhood in Aosta, Italy, before going back to the United States for education.  After Navy service in World War II, Buscaglia entered the University of Southern California where he earned three degrees before eventually joining the faculty. Upon retirement, Buscaglia was named Professor at Large, one of only two such designations on campus at that time.

While teaching at USC, Buscaglia was moved by a student's suicide to contemplate human disconnectedness and the meaning of life, and began a non-credit class he called Love 1A. This became the basis for his first book, titled simply LOVE. His dynamic speaking style was discovered by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and his televised lectures earned great popularity in the 1980s. At one point his talks, always shown during fund raising periods, were the top earners of all PBS programs. This national exposure, coupled with the heartfelt storytelling style of his books, helped make all of his titles national Best Sellers; five were once on the New York Times Best Sellers List simultaneously.

Buscaglia died of a heart attack on June 12, 1998 at his home in Glenbrook, Nevada, near Lake Tahoe. He was 74.

-- Excerpts from wikipedia.org: Leo Buscaglia

I happened upon Leo Buscaglia one day on television.  He was giving the first of his series on love.  He was eloquent and driven, passionate about the subject, and I was riveted.  In the 1980s I had just returned from a short tour in Incerlik, Turkey, and was celebrating 30 years of life on this planet. Also, by the 1980s, my marriage was a shambles, anger and frustration over my own in ability to salvage it was destroying what was left of it. In many ways, Leo was responsible for teaching me life, destroying my life, and rebuilding my life.  At thirty years of age I was to learn what love was, from a man I didn't even know, and it would change my life forever.

"I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn."

I struggled with my marriage for another 15 years or so before it finally became painfully evident I was the only one working on it.  The outcome of this is finding I was a stubborn fool trying to ride a horse, without enough common sense to realize the horse was dead.  You can throw all the love you have at a rock; the rock will not love you back.  This was where I found myself at the beginning of the new millenia - riding a dead horse and loving a rock.  As I found myself contemplating putting an end to pain, as I had come to define it, I remembered the words of Leo:

"I believe that you control your destiny, that you can be what you want to be. You can also stop and say, 'No, I won't do it, I won't behave his way anymore. I'm lonely and I need people around me, maybe I have to change my methods of behaving,' and then you do it."

Watching and listening to Leo Buscaglia taught me about life.  What I found in his words concerning love taught me what I needed to learn about life and love, just before it destroyed my life, because it needed destroying.  My life was already dead and I was just too stupid to realize it.  After I finished burning my life to the ground and put out the ashes, remembering his teachings helped me to rebuild my life with a new understanding of what life, and love, really meant.  I surrounded myself with people, good friends, capable of living and loving, and it turned my life around.

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."

Now, one might say I'm speaking of this man as if he were a savior.  Yeah, I guess I am in a sense.  When you listen to Leo... when you listen to what he says and how he says it, it is easy to put yourself back 2000 years.  It is easy to see how captivating Jesus may have seemed to the people of the day.

"Love is always bestowed as a gift - freely, willingly and without expectation. We don't love to be loved; we love to love."

I invite you, this Sunday, and every day, to enjoy the words of Leo Buscaglia.  I think you will find, after a few minutes, you'll need to go get a drink and a sandwich so you can hunker down for the long haul.  I have included the link for the series, Leo Buscaglia - Speaking of Love (1-6).  My hope is that you will find the man as captivating as I did.

"The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another's, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises."

Editor's Note 

(re: disclaimer cum "get out of jail free" card) 

Before you go getting your panties in a bunch, it is essential to understand that this is just an opinion site and, as such, can be subjected to scrutiny by anyone with a differing opinion. It doesn't make either opinion any more right or wrong than the other. An opinion, presented in this context, is a way of inciting others to think and, hopefully, to form opinions of their own, if they haven't already done so.

It is my fervent hope that we keep open and active minds when reading opinions and then engaging in peaceful, constructive, discussion and debate in an arena of mutual respect concerning the opinions put forth. After over twenty years as a military intelligence analyst, planner, and briefer, I have come to believe engaging each other in this manner and in this arena is the way we will learn tolerance and respect for differing beliefs, cultures, and viewpoints.

We all fall from grace, some more often than others; it is part of being human. God's test for us is what we do afterward, and what we learn from the experience.

Frank Anthony Villari (aka, Pastor Tony)

Pastor Tony is founder of the Congregation for Religious Tolerance and author/editor of the Congregation's official blog site, "The Path."