Hi everyone, welcome back! Last week I examined what ‘Fear’ really is, what it feels like in the mind and body and the harm it can do in your life if you don’t take the time to identify, examine and learn to manage it. This week on the other hand, I want to talk about ‘Love’ because this is the feeling that gives meaning to our lives and makes it worth living!
Belief: Love can’t solve all the world problems. They are way too big for love’s reach!
Are you that person who thinks love is good and important but it can’t solve all the very complicated world problems? I am that person too to some extent, however, as I learn to love myself and everyone around me more and more each day, I am beginning to realize that maybe we can solve all world problems just through love. Let’s explore if/how we can actually apply the ‘love balm’ in any situation.
But before we begin, let’s first try to understand LOVE…what does this word mean to you? I want you to pay attention to the thoughts your mind creates when you think about love. Imagine what you feel in your body when you think about this beautiful feeling of love. Do certain people come to your mind? Are you imagining your parents, your spouse, your kids or other close family members and friends? Are you imagining being in certain serene locations that you think create the feeling of love in you? Are you imagining doing what you love to do – your passion? This is exactly what comes to my mind and maybe the minds of most or all humans when they try to imagine that feeling of love. But have you ever noticed that this feeling of love towards certain people, your passion, certain places; it’s all your choice! It’s you choice because you are consciously choosing to love all these people or things because you want to. You choose to love your parents because they gave birth to you. You choose to love your passion because that’s what makes you happy. You choose to love your spouse because you want to spend your life with them. You choose to love your kids because you brought them into this world. However sometimes, instead of choosing to love these people or things, some of us choose to ‘not love’ them and there could be a variety of reasons behind that. But the point that I am trying to make is that we always ‘choose’ love over any other negative emotion like fear and even though love may not come to us naturally in certain situations or around certain people but we always have a choice where we can choose love.
So if love really is a choice, then anyone can choose love in any situation? Right? So, let’s explore at least one of those situations that we encounter so very frequently in our personal lives. Let’s take an example which is so simple yet so very profound which will help illustrate that we can actually choose love over anger or fear or any other negative emotion in a difficult situation. And what could be a more difficult situation than the one where your kid is in the middle of a really bad tantrum. So, let’s imagine your kid just went into a massive tantrum over something. It doesn’t quite matter if this ‘something’ is trivial or much bigger than trivial. The point is that since your kid just went into a big tantrum mode where they are kicking and screaming and yelling and crying – all at the same time and God forbid if this happens at a public place, you as a parent is mortified!! You are mortified because your efforts to try to reason with your kid is going absolutely nowhere, yet, you are in the middle of this situation and each person passing by is looking at you like your kid is the only kid in the world who throws a tantrum :-). At this point, even though you are trying to show as much patience as possible and are trying to stay as calm as possible, chances are, in less than 5 minutes you will start to get very angry yourself and start your own tantrum. And if this happens, instead of getting better, the situation will actually get a lot worse because now there are 2 people throwing a tantrum :-). So this is that perfect time when you have an opportunity to choose love over fear. When you choose fear, as I already pointed above, you will get into that tantrum mode yourself. However, if you choose love, it will on the other hand allow you as a parent to view your child as a child who is trying to express themselves because they don’t quite know how to yet. It will help you remember that even though the situation looks bad, it quite isn’t that bad and so your own flight or fight mode is not triggered. Being able to choose love may help also to bring the intensity of the tantrum down and allow the kid to feel like they are not a bad person for not being able to control their own emotions and this love approach may end up being be a win-win for both parents and kids. And once the storm has passed, you can then talk some reason into your kid about what happened.
I know some of you may be rolling your eyes and making your faces right now because of this ‘love balm’ approach but you have to try it to believe it! Just reading my blog won’t do the trick :-). You may not be able to reach for that feeling of love every time but whenever you are actually able to choose love over fear, you will feel so good about yourself and your life!
Let’s take another example of people who commit crimes in this world. I know this could be a very sensitive topic for folks who themselves have fallen victims to various crimes committed by other humans. But have you guys ever wondered that with all the variety of punishments and jails and prisons and other equally bad things that we have created as part of our justice systems to prevent crime from happening, this crime should have been a thing of the past by now. But that is so far away from what reality today is. So, if fear and fearful techniques is not an incentive enough to stop a human being from committing this crime, I think maybe it’s time to now review our fearful techniques and update and upgrade them so that we look at the committers of crime from a perspective of love rather than fear. I know very well this is a very hard concept but don’t you think it’s worth looking into because of where the human race is headed?
And as always, feel free to leave a comment, if you feel like leaving one. And until next Friday, live life 🙂
