You will be the same person in five years as you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read. That’s a quote by author and motivational speaker Charlie “Tremendous” Jones. We can’t always control the people we meet, but we can control the books we read.
I didn’t stop my education after I left the University of Missouri Columbia in 1982. I continued it by reading — something I still do. Those who follow this column know I enjoy reading books on history and biographies of America’s founding fathers.
Another category I immerse myself in is motivational, self-help books. One of my favorite authors from the 80s is Felice Leonardo Buscaglia. The name on his books was Leo Buscaglia, but he was known as “Dr. Love.” He was also a motivational speaker and a professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Southern California.
A student’s suicide at USC prompted him to contemplate the meaning of life. So he started a noncredit class entitled “Love 1A.” His first book, “Love: What Life Is All About,” written in 1972, was an outgrowth from that class.
Buscaglia was the first author/speaker to promote the need for hugs. On his scale, it took a minimum of five hugs daily for basic survival, eight to maintain a healthy life and 12 or more to thrive.
If you know my wife, Connie, she will greet you with a hug. She thrives. I need more work on that.
For those of you who are younger than 45, you don’t realize that in the 80s and 90s, Buscaglia was part of American culture. This was long before Facebook, YouTube or Tiktok.
In the May 12, 1984 Peanuts comic strip, the dog Snoopy gives Charlie Brown and Sally a long, sincere hug. In the next frame, Charlie explains to his little sister that, “You can always tell when he’s been listening to Leo Buscaglia tapes.”
Buscaglia was also referenced in the comic strip The Far Side. It was April 22, 1991. A man dressed as a bullfighter awaits the charge of another person with outstretched arms. The caption reads: “In some remote areas of the world, the popular sport is to watch a courageous young man avoid being hugged by a Leo Buscaglia impersonator.”
If Buscaglia had still been alive during COVID-19 the lack of human contact may have killed him.
Buscaglia wrote 14 books. At one time, five were on the New York Times bestsellers list simultaneously.
His common theme was love. One of his messages was Synthesize, Compromise and Empathize. To synthesize, Buscaglia explained, was to “bring things together in life, focus in on how magical this life really is. Love everything with passion. Love everyone…including yourself.”
You have to start with yourself, because if you don’t love yourself, you have no love to give to others.
He taught us to “accept frustration and conflict as a part of life because it is a part of life. It’s the part of life from which you will learn.”
Learn to laugh at yourself and be thankful, Buscaglia would say.
For Buscaglia, labeling — something our world accelerates at today — was wrong. He said, “Labeling pushes people away from each other. Black woman. What is a black woman? I have never known two alike. Does she love? Does she care? What about her kids? Has she cried? Is she lonely? Is she beautiful? Is she happy? Is she giving something to someone? These are the important things. Not the fact that she is a black woman. The same counts for children. Less able, stupid, emotionally disturbed. I have never known a stupid child. Never! I have only known children and never two alike. There are too many beautiful things about each human being to give him a label and put him aside.”
Isn’t that the same message of Martin Luther King Jr., to not judge one another by the color of one’s skin?
He said that on his gravestone he wanted written, “Here lies Leo who died living.”
Buscaglia passed away at his home on June 12, 1998, in Glenbrook, Nevada at the age of 74. Today a new generation of readers needs to discover Buscaglia’s books. If you are like me, you may still have one or more of his books in your library. I hope this column encourages you to reread them. Another thing we can all do to make the world a better place is to gift one of his books to a relative or friend.
After all, what the world needs now is love.
