The topic of love is fascinating. Ever since human beings felt this attraction for others, they have tried to describe it. Love has inspired books, songs, and works of art, achievements, and the course of history. Love is the glue that holds civilization together. Love is the essence of life. Love is your most compelling need.
Yet, love is almost impossible to describe. Explaining your love to someone is like telling them what an onion taste like. So people do not try. Some write about the most obvious qualities of love and offer ideas that may help you get more of it, and give of it. Let me share an often-told story about love. I do not know whether the story is true, but it certainly makes a point.
The story is told about a child in an orphanage. She was not pretty, had annoying characteristics and the other children were not friendly with her. Even the teachers looked on her as a nuisance and problem. One day one of the children ran into the office and reported that the girl was passing secret messages to someone outside, “I saw her climb a tree and throw a note over the wall”, the child said. The head of the school and an assistant hurried out and started searching in the grass and shrubs beside the wall. They soon found a soiled folded piece of note-paper. On it, in a childish scroll were these words: “To whoever finds this, I love you.”
The child was expressing the words indelibly inscribed in the heart of every individual. Every one you know, every stranger you pass is saying, "Whoever you are, I want to love you." This is difficult to realize many times. The words are too deeply buried for even the bearer to know they are there. The shell has become too callused; the channels have become too obstructed. The scars are too thick, but you can be sure that the words are there. They need only be discovered and encouraged for them to emerge and be heard and seen. Let us think about for just a moment what is holding them back.
Most people know little about giving love, or getting it. Love is known only as a feeling. One thing most people are sure of is that he or she are never loved the way they think they should be. People received love it in its most perfect form from their mothers when they were babies before they could be conscious of it. Since that time, they have experienced only a small part of the love they once knew. People try to satisfy this longing the same way they fill their other needs - they look outward for it. He or she goes to school for knowledge, to a store for food, a church for religion, a doctor to get well, a mental health worker for help and support, someone else to cut their hair, to build their homes and to clean their cloths. So people look to other people for love. And it always seems to be like the end of the rainbow, just ahead somewhere in the horizon, beautiful, visible, but out of touch.
So, people spend a good part of their lives with that restless yearning and hunger that never seems to be fully satisfied. Possibly you or someone you know has experienced some of these feelings. If so, consider this for a new direction that could greatly enrich your life. Stop looking for love from others. Love is not finding or feeling, love is “being.” Being your true self that is! It does not come from the outside in, but from the inside out. What you, or someone you know may have felt was a need to be loved was truly a need to be more loving. Love is a person’s strongest power. Love is the source of one’s soul, spirit, and energy: our very life force itself. Unless one finds the love within, he or she will never find the love of another.
For example, for others to love you, you must be LOVABLE. To be lovable, you must be, loving. You cannot give your love to anyone. You can only be, loving. Love begins with yourself. You must love yourself. Others will love you only if you love yourself. Love your body, your mind, your thoughts, your life, and course work. Love the spirit within you which is the perfect unseen soul that directs your higher purpose. Love others, love animals, the trees, grass, flowers, stars, sunshine, and water. Everything you see, touch, and taste. Stop hating anything, even bugs, and weeds, or people who do terrible things. Your life is too short for hate. Love in the way most natural for you. It may be in pursuing excellence in your course work, finding ways to help others do the same, or being more kind, understanding, and tolerant of others.
You may smile more, listen more and be more considerate of others. You may become more outgoing or more affectionate as your love flows out or perhaps not. That may not be your behavior style. That does not make you unloving. Many love best when they are alone. They quiet their thoughts and reflect on the love within themselves regenerating it, letting it flood their mind and heart and form the currents of their daily lives. "Loving," that is one’s strongest need. Loving will spur a person to the peaks of achievement, stir their heart with gladness, heal the body and bring peace and tranquility to the mind. The healing effects of loving has been demonstrated in thousands of instances. Your love is your possession to cherish, enjoy, and to share. And finding it is often no more effort than simply removing the negative wrappings that have hidden it from sight. For some strange reason, there are people who drift along in a fog of self-concern, envy, self-pity, hate and criticism of others for their lack of love. That type of attitude always deprives a relationship of its loving qualities.
For example, a pretty girl name Lori, 6 years old, restless, and imaginative was having a difficult time adjusting to the routine of school. Each day was more of a struggle for her mother who suffered every time the child came home and burst into tears as she described how she was made to sit in a corner or was scolded by the teacher for not doing better work. One day the girl came in the door sobbing because she had missed 14 questions out of 25 on a test. The teacher had criticized her within hearing distance of some of the other children. On the playground, they called her . . . a dummy! Irritated and upset the mother went directly to the school and the girl’s teacher. “I’m fed up!” she erupted. “I have a child in your class and she’s a human being . . . A warm, feeling, loving worthwhile human being. And right now, it’s being decided who she’s going to be someday. I’m trying to help her be somebody. Every time I think I am getting someplace she comes over here and it’s all undone. I just won’t have it anymore. Why don’t you build up, instead of tear down? So the child misses 14 on a test. Why condemn her for that. Tell her she got 11 right . . . that’s good! Why not try for 12 tomorrow.
The communications continued, and a change in the teacher’s attitude resulted, and the child did much better. The situation is a serious reminder of the process that is always at work with people. People can communicate to heal and hurt one another. They help or hinder. People invite others to grow and flourish, or to shrivel and die through communication. People are always communicating emotional intelligence and reacting to each other positively, negatively, or passively. There are those who by their very presence and love make others feel important, alive, and capable of becoming someone better then they had ever known before. Then there are those who seem to have a talent for cutting others down making them seem inadequate and useless causing people to give up, and hold back and stop trying. Yes, some people need help to get rid of negative thoughts, comments, and reactions. These individuals justified their constant fault-finding of others as “constructive criticism.” There caustic sarcasm is "joking", their verbal hostilities as "an honest relationship", and their bias put downs as "objective appraisals." He or she withholds their love, praise, and compliments explaining that what they communicate must be sincere. These people seem to have a talent for communicating the weaknesses of others instead of their strengths.
Not too long ago while teaching a human relations workshop for a number of married couples, I asked each person to write down 15 good things about his or her spouse. I was going to give a prize out to the first one to complete the project. Soon, one person stood up with joy as she finished list. What was significant was that everyone else in the room had not yet made his or her first mark on the paper. Imagine being married to a person and not being willing or able to write down even one praise or worthy characteristic of that person. Relating only to another person’s negative characteristics is a gradual suffocation of the joy and richness of life for that person.
A famous lie detection expert acting on impulse after working late in his office some time ago wired a polygraph machine to the leaf of a plant to gauge any response to water poured on the house plant’s roots. The polygraph showed a response. Intrigued, the expert dumped one of the plant’s leaves into his cup of hot coffee. No reaction. So he conceived a worse threat. He decided to burn the electrode-attached leaf. As soon as he “pictured” the burning leaf in his mind, there was a dramatic change . . . A long upward sweep of the recording pin on the graph. Since then he and others have conducted extensive studies linking plant life to the emotions and attitude of humans. The results prove conclusively that plants reflect what is shown to them. When they are admired and praised, they thrive and fill the air with their lovely life, but when shunned and condemn, they become stunted and sickly.
If human beings have this effect on plants, think how more powerful effect their love can have on each other. There are those splendid people who do invite this growth in others, helping them to encourage their talent and unseen capacities to blossom forth and be known to the world. There are people in the world that just seem to save others from themselves. It is in some people’s opinion that is exactly what mental health workers do. What about you?
In the hearts of everyone, there is a strange mixture that lifts up and pulls down. For every hope, there is a doubt, for every dream, a despair, for every ounce of confidence there is an equal weight of helplessness, or for every grain of ambition, there is a corresponding amount of apathy. Which prevails? Which dominates one’s life? Those precious people who help others grow seem to have an ability to melt the inhibitive characteristics in others much as the sun removes the frost. The guilt, the weariness, the skepticism seeing oneself as limited or inadequate all fade from reality in these gifted people’s loving presence.
Why are these important things for you to know? Because to the degree you communicate yourself as a loving person to others will be a good measure of how successful you are going to be in life and your work. You see the formula for success is not too complicated. To become successful in life, you have to get things done, and there are only three ways to get things done. First, do it yourself. Second, get help, or third, give help. The first way, doing it yourself is a good way to get something done, but it is rather limiting. You can only become as successful as your own time and effort will allow. Studies have shown that those achieving outstanding success when working with others have generally done it by expanding their efforts through others. That means that they have learned how to get things done by getting help, or giving help. That idea of giving help is particularly interesting because it is a concept that is often overlooked. It means that you can get things done and become successful by helping others get things done. The manager becomes successful by helping the subordinates become successful. The teacher succeeds by helping the students succeed. In marriage, one thrives and triumphs only by helping their love one to do the same. So, getting some rules for helping others become successful is important for your own success.
There’s a story that has been going around about that for a number of years. It has something to with the idea about “casting your bread upon the waters.” The story lives because it appears to be true. It works. Here are some ideas or ways you can cast your bread on the waters and make others more successful. Your interest in helping others through communications must be genuine. It must be free from the feelings of self-pity, envy, or jealousy of the other person’s position.
To achieve a sincere attitude of helping others follow these guidelines: First, do not help people merely for your own selfish gain. Secondly, do not help people simply to get them to do things for you. And finally, do not help people just to win their favor. In other words, help people only as a way of satisfying your own need for loving. You will be amazed how quickly it comes back to you in some form. You can help people by giving encouragement to the strengths you see in them. Whoever you are, wherever you might be, there are talents to be uncovered in people around you. Compliment them, assure them; stimulate them to make the best possible use of their potential abilities.
In order to fully appreciate the contribution you can make by doing this, you would have to see a few of the thousands of people whose lives have been altered by other people’s encouragement. You would have had to be the employment interviewer and talked to the widow that said, “My husband always told me I had a knack for remembering people’s names. He said I should be a receptionist. Now that he is gone, I will have to work. So I decided to try to get a job as a receptionist." She was placed in a bank. Within a short period, she had memorized the name of every customer of the bank and starting calling them by their name. The president of the bank said he receives more favorable comments about her from customers than about any other one service of the bank.
So there you have it! A philosophy of love and communication that can create what can be called by some a miracle, and all one has to be is more loving. It’s truly quite easy. Give praise and encouragement. Be tolerant, listen, try to understand, share yourself, search out the good in others, help them dream and dismissed their blunders and mistakes. Just be kind.
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