“If you have particular faith or religion, that is good. But you can survive without it if you have a love, compassion and tolerance. The clear proof of a person’s love of God is if that person genuinely shows love to fellow human beings.” (Dalai Lama)
As my experience, I believe that people need to feel understood and supported. Sometimes, when we meet people and they tell us about their problem, they are not really need advice. Often they already knew the answer – they only need understanding. So do I. And the real situation we see simply to be loved with understanding manifests itself in couples or lovers. Here is the illustration. The woman starts to tell the problem to her lover. After a minute he interrupts and tells her what to do about them because he is geared up to be a problem solver. But she is very unhappy. She doesn’t want his advice. She just needs a time to be listened and get messages he cares about her. And I realize that I still need to learn to love people with understanding.
And this is my experience. I see many people who lives are not as fulfilling as they might be, simply because these people are too involved with themselves. And our society puts too much emphasis on finding someone who will love you; focuses too much on being loved and not enough on being a loving person. None of us has the power to make someone else love us. But we all have the power to give away love, to love other people. And if we do so, we change the kind of person we are and we change the kind of world we live in.
This afternoon, I just saw two children in a playground get into a fight. One of them said,”I hate you. I never want to play with you again.” For two or three minutes they play separately, and then they come back and start playing with each other again. Can you imagine that? They choose happiness over righteousness. How about us? We often choose the righteousness than happiness. We often say, “he/she had hurt me, why do I need to forgive him/her? Do I need still keep our relationship?” And I learned, in a true love, when you really love someone especially in romantic relationship, the essence of love is not about romance, but forgiveness – accepting a person’s imperfections and understanding that each of us has his or her quirks that would drive us crazy but for the love between us. Without forgiveness and let the love guides you, you will never find the true meaning of love.
Again, choose happiness than righteousness, even you angry, disappointed, felt hurt or you think you are right. Don’t demand recognition of the fact. You will loose him/her. In couple relationship, there is no winners or losers, only two people who agree to put up with each other.
When I decided to love someone for the rest in my life and say it deeply in my heart, I achieved a sense of wholeness, not just when I find someone with whom I sleep and live but I really join with that person and feel his joy and pain. Even he doesn’t mention it. And I decide to listen with my heart than questioning.
I recognize that I need love in the same way I need food and sleep and exercise. I understand that my soul will shrivel up from malnutrition if I didn’t love, didn’t give love or receive love. Its just like a series of prayers that focus in grateful for all the things around us that we might otherwise take for granted. Finally, its easier to be loving – to my self and to others.
