Today’s NYT "Modern Love" column speaks to the tension between playfulness and seriousness in a maybe-this-could-be-for-the-long-term relationship.  Stephen R. Johnson tells us how he and the woman he is dating lapse into childish language whenever they need to talk about how they are working together.  On the one hand, he enjoys the fun of it all – he wants to keep things happy and light.  But, as time goes on, he realizes they cannot break out of the pattern.  He asks: "…when do words of endearment become infantilization?"

     Confucius (not the person most would turn to for modern love advice) has an answer.

     Confucius takes language very seriously.  He is so worried that words will be insufficient to convey human feeling, he tells us to act before we speak and, then, to stand by our words.   

Adept Hsia asked about the noble-minde, and the Master said: "Such people act before they speak, then they speak according to their actions. (Analects 1.13)

Action is a much better expression of intention; words simply ratify what has already been enacted.  Words of endearment, then, are meaningless, if they are not preceded by consistently committed action.

     This is especially true for relationships.  For Confucius, a self is not constructed in isolation – no man is an island.  Rather, in the words of David L. Hall and Roget T. Ames, in their great book Thinking Through Confucius:

…a person is meaningful and valuable as a function of his participation in the field of selves that constitutes his community, and the quality of his own person in turn is a function of both the richness and diversity of the contributing selves that he has brought into his particular focus, and the extent that he has been successful in maximizing their creative possibilities. (119)

     This is a fancy way of saying we are  the product of the relationships we cultivate.  The self is inescapably social.  In order to realize our full humanity we must take in others, take on the concerns of people closest to us.  This is not play; it is the hard work of constructing fully moral selves.  We should start, Confucians believe, with those closest to us, and build a caring web of relationships radiating outward to all we encounter.  This idea is echoed in the I Ching (Book of Changes), in the hexagram for Family:

The Image

Wind comes forth forth from fire:
The image of The Family.
Thus the superior man has substance in his words
And duration in his way of life. (144)

 The commentary for this passage goes on to say: "Here too the influence on others must proceed from one’s own person.  In order to be capable of producing such an influence, one’s words must have power, and this they can have only if they are based on something real, just as flame depends on its fuel."  Earlier the commentary tells us that when the family is in order, all under heaven can be in order.  There is a greater emphasis here on social order and influence then we might be used to, but the root of all of this is caring and loving personal relationships with people closest to us.

     Of course, for Confucius the crux of all loving relationships is the family.  This puts a lot of pressure on a person in Johnson’s position: a guy dating, maybe thinking of a family, but not really ready to go that far.  Interestingly, a conventional family may not be the only kind of social arrangement possible for the enactment of Confucian humanity.  Hall and Ames go on to say:

"…given the need to adjust structure to circumstances and the wealth of possible worlds, the family is perhaps best regarded as a contingent institution that could, under different conditions, be replaced by a different, more appropriate, more meaningful communal organization." (121)

     So, dating does not have to carry the burden of imminent family-making, but the cultivation of relationships is always serious business.