Part of what’s wrong in the world is a profound misunderstanding of love.
We are easily caught up with its counterfeits: craving, lust, possession and infatuation.
To experience genuine love is to awaken; to express this love is to be fully alive.
We can express love as we serve others: through our intention to do good (and not to harm), to be open to the suffering and the needs of another, and to help where we can; to seize each and every opportunity to make a positive difference; to share our own gifts; to see beauty in another, and bring out the best.
Love lifts us up.
Our families can open us to connecting, letting go of self-interests and learning to love unconditionally. Loving my children has made me a better person. The love of my parents who loved all that I was brought out the best in me.
But parental love can be conditional. Do we love our children most because they are our children and not someone else’s?
Do we love them more when they are good and when they do things that please us? Do we see our children as our possessions or extensions of our own egos?
Children sometimes feel that they must earn the love of their parents, and if they don’t do what their parents want, they won’t be loved.
But that is not unconditional love.
What I want most for the people I love is that they each love themselves the way I love them: that they accept themselves and their lives just as they are, forgive themselves, let go of what they do not need, let go of what holds them back, see the beauty that I see in them, and share their gifts with the world.
Loving your life as it has unfolded is a challenge. There are events and experiences that are unpleasant, regretful and overwhelming: misfortune and trauma, negative situations, difficult relationships, harm we have experienced, harm that we have done, missed opportunities, words left unsaid and acts left undone.
We have all made mistakes, taken wrong turns and experienced regret. We have all felt angry, selfish, cold or closed.
We experience aversion with strong emotions — fear, anger, despair — that are hard to accept, acknowledge and release.
We may wish to relive happier times, erase negative experiences and correct our mistakes.
But the only way to be truly happy and to live life fully is to live fully in the present — to acknowledge and accept all that has happened, all that we’ve done and all that we are — in order to be present to each arising moment.
To turn away, hide or fight against our nature and the reality of our world is to give greater power to the very things we push away. They continue to hold us back from fully loving, fully living and finding our true selves.
We can choose to let go, and we are freed to see more clearly: to see beauty, to love unconditionally our selves, others and our lives.
We are all human and imperfect but still deserving of love, beautiful and able to love.
What you do in your thoughts, words and actions to benefit another — or to benefit the world — benefits you.
What you do to nurture your soul, nurtures the world.
Dr. Davidicus Wong is a family physician. His healthwise column appears regularly in this paper. For more on achieving your positive potential in life visit online davidicuswong.wordpress.com.
