About Love
SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT LOVE
Love is like life itself.
Ideally, it is passed down through the generations.
You must absorb enough love before you can give it to others.
Once you've absorbed enough love,
there's a natural urge for it to "overflow."
Loving someone is not natural or automatic.
It requires the decision to love.
Love is not a need.
(But it's one of the strongest "wants" we will ever have.)
If you don't love yourself, you don't love.
(No matter how many apparently loving things you do....)
Self-love is always the strongest.
We never take mistreatment from someone "because we love them."
We take mistreatment from someone because
we agree with them that we are unlovable.
Loving someone does not mean that we love everything they do.
Loving ourselves does not mean that we love everything we do!
Love cannot be earned.
No one "deserves" to be loved!
Love is too wonderful for any of us to have a "right" to it!
Love is not need.
Need is not love.
(Sometimes need even kills love...)
Love is not passion.
Passion is not love.
(But they sure work well together!)
Romantic love is somewhat overvalued.
The love of strangers is greatly undervalued.
When you decide to love someone
you are setting yourself up to eventually love everyone else.
Love is not something with "quantity."
You can't use it up!
If you give it to one person you are not "robbing" any other person of it!
(Time and energy, on the other hand, are quantities that can be used up.)
Love and hate are not opposites.
They coexist in all relationships.
Never set up tests of someone's love for you.
It's very hard to kill love,
but "testing" it can do the job very quickly!
Getting love is seldom more than a matter of:
1) Finding someone who can love,
2) Asking for their love,
3) Then receiving it without imagining that strings are attached.
For people who have not yet learned to love themselves,
absorbing love is the hardest, and most necessary, thing they can do.
Loving is a little bit scary.
After all, it might get thrown back in your face.
But loving no one is the scariest of all.
It leads to isolation, desperation and other horrors.
There is nothing more wonderful for a loving person
than to see someone absorb their love.
Don't impugn the motives of someone who loves you,
and don't be surprised when you find that they want something from you.
Everyone who loves you is selfish.
So is everyone who doesn't!
So is everyone.
It's not complicated to find out if someone loves you.
Just look into their eyes as they are looking at you
and believe what you see!
Our partners need to love us AND treat us well!
Love does not conquer all! (Damn it!)
Love is not joy,
but it sure brings a lot of it around!
I can't explain why we humans have been given the ability to love
but I intend to spend my whole life taking full advantage of it.
I want to take it when it's there and move on when it's not.
I want to give it when I have it,
and continue to marvel as I watch it multiply.
Love is about inclusion.
Self-love is taking our place in the universe.
Loving others is giving them a place within ourselves.
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About Joy
OUR "AUTOMATIC PILOT"
Plants are on automatic pilot to grow toward the sun.
Animals are on automatic pilot to grow toward food and procreation.
Everything in nature is on automatic pilot
- constantly seeking what will meet its needs.
Humans are on automatic pilot toward joy.
HOW IT WORKS
We have feelings about our needs
(like for food, air, water, etc.).
When needs are satisfied we feel joy.
We have feelings about our wants
(for love and affection, even for things like a new car).
When wants are satisfied we feel joy.
Our emotions constantly push us toward joy.
When we use our anger well
we increase our odds of getting what we want
and feeling joy.
When we use our sadness well
we replace what we've lost
and feel joy again.
When we use our scare well
we protect ourselves
and feel joy.
There's even a built in inducement toward joy called excitement.
We feel excited whenever we are "on our way" toward what we want!
Excitement mobilizes our energy to keep us on track toward joy.
HOW TO GET MORE JOY IN YOUR LIFE
The "Cheaters" Way(!):
The easiest way to get more joy in your life is to
simply IMAGINE that you've got something you want.
Using your imagination in this way produces an immediate dose of joy.
The problem, of course, is that since you know you are only imagining,
this dose only lasts for the very short time you can maintain the fantasy.
Still, it's a great idea to give yourself these small doses regularly
as long as you don't confuse these fantasies with reality.
Being More Aware Of Regularly Occurring Joys:
Every single time we take care of a bodily need
we feel a considerable amount of joy.
When we eat a great meal or even when we grab a bite of fast food
we feel quite a bit of joy!
Go on a campaign for a few weeks.
Take the time to actually feel the recurring joys of every day life.
(Most of us take these moments for granted and rush right past them....)
Zero In On Affection and Attention:
We all love to be noticed and liked or loved by others.
Most of us are noticed by others many times every day.
Most of us spend some time each day
with people who simply enjoy being with us.
These are moments of affection and attention.
The key, again, is to
take the time to notice
how good these things feel!
About The Joy Of Getting "Stuff":
There is real joy to be had from getting stuff
(everything from new clothes to a new house).
But don't expect much from this.
Advertisers tell us that if we had all the stuff we wanted
we would be very, very happy!
They are lying!
Getting stuff feels good only for a relatively short while.
The thrill of a new car usually lasts only a few days or weeks
and it then just becomes background.
The excitement about moving into a new house probably lasts a month or two
before it too becomes background.
And when we get down to the smaller stuff of daily life
- like new shoes, or a meal at a fancy restaurant -
most of these "thrills" last only minutes or hours.
Take the time to enjoy these things,
but don't be surprised when you notice the abrupt end to such joys.
THE BIG JOYS
The big joys of life come from getting our needs met regularly
and from getting big doses of attention and affection.
You can supplement these big joys
with the joy that comes from fantasy
and with the joy that comes from getting stuff.
But nothing will ever compare to the bigger joys
that come from taking care of your own needs
and absorbing the love and caring of others.
ABOUT "TAKING THE TIME TO FEEL THE JOY"
We have much more joy in our lives now than in the past,
but we hurry so much more too.
Overcoming our culture's insistence that we hurry our lives away
might be the most important thing we can do
to actually feel more of the joy in our lives!
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS:
After each bite of food,
after each trip to the bathroom(!),
after each "stroke" you get from the people who like you,
after every opportunity for joy,
stop everything for a moment
and NOTICE
that good feeling of joy!
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