I don’t think
that there is a more challenging human experience than that of cultivating the
ability to meet our own emotional needs. I also think where matters of the
heart are concerned, that much of the turbulence we experience in our
relationships is the unfortunate by-product of misguidedly expecting others to
be a reliable source for filling our emotional voids.
The desire to
love and be loved is a good and natural impulse. Love is central, after all, to
living a satisfying, joyful and stimulating life. Where we go wrong, I believe,
is in our efforts to, essentially, extract this from the lives of other people—to
derive, to squeeze, however subtly, what we sense is deficient in our own life,
from the life of another.
We need,
primarily, to source this nourishment within ourselves.
Ultimately, a
true and robust love must be cultivated and blossom from within.
Not to say that we
shouldn’t enjoy the love others bestow on us, or that we may not lean on our
friends and lovers for support, but it
must not become either a rigid expectation that they serve us in this way, or
an unconscious habit.
All I’m saying
is that people will come and go, so sourcing our emotional sustenance there is
not ever going to prove very reliable however wonderful they may be. They do,
after all, have their own lives to attend to with all the inherent struggles
and challenges implicit in any human life.
It isn’t their
job, per se, to fill our emotional needs.
Truly being
loved is a gift that we bestow on each other—a freely flowing, spontaneous offering
of our hearts. Choose your friends and lovers with care.
At the end of
the day, being the love you wish to experience in the world is where it’s
at—embodying respect, being kind, gentle, compassionate—being whatever love
means to you.
It’s a worthy practice.
Devote yourself to it. Nourish and be nourished by it.
Be the love …
