Cynicism is the great mask of disappointed or betrayed heart
It is fat easier to talk about loss than it is to talk about love. It is easier to articulatw the pain of love's absence than to describe its presenve and meaning in our lives
To open our hearts more fully to love's power and grace we must dare to acknowledge how little we know of love in both theory and practice. We must face the confusion and disappointment that much of what we were taught about the nature of love makes no sense when applied to daily life
When the very meaning of love is cloaked in mystery, it should not come as a surprise that most people find it hard to define what they mean when they use the word "love"
To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients -- care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication. Learning faulty definitions of love when we are quite young makes it difficult to be loving as we grow older.
When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive.
I am grateful to have been raised in a family that was caring, and strongly believe that had my parents been loved well by their parents they would have given that love to their children. They gave what they were given -- care. Remember, care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving.
I wanted to know love but I was afraid to surrender and trust another person. I was afraid to be intimate. By choosing men who were not interested in being loving, I was able to practice giving love, but always within an unfulfilling context. Naturally, my need to receive love was not met. I got what I accustomed to getting -- care and affection, usually mingled with a degree of unkindness, neglect, and, on some occasion outright cruelty.
So many of us long for love but lack the courage to take risks. Even though we are obsessed with the idea of love, the truth is that most of us live relatively decent, some what satisfying lives even if we often feel that love is lacking. In these relationships we share genuine affection and care. For most of us, that feels like enough because it is usually a lot more than we received in our families of origin.
To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone assumes accountability and responsibility.
I was brought up to believe that love is rooted in blood relationships. You naturally loved anyone in your family. Love was not a choice. The love I learned about was bound by duty or obligation.
Lots of people learn how to lie in childhood. Usually they begin to lie to avoid punishment or to avoid disappointing or hurting an adult.
I was raised in a world where the children were taught to tell the truth, but it did not take long for us to figure out that adults did not practiced what they preached. Among my siblings, those who learned how to tell polite lies or say what grownups wanted to hear were always more popular and more rewarded than those of us who told the truth
You can lie as a way of obtaining power, and also lie to pretend powerlessness.
Women are often comfortable lying to men in order to manipulate them to give us things we feel we want or deserve.
Self love cannot flourish in isolation. It is no easy task to be self loving.
I, like so many other people, have found it useful to examine negative thinking and behavioral patterns learned in childhood, particularly those shaping my sense of self and identity. However this process alone did not ensure self discovery. It was not enough. I share this because it as far too easy to stay stuck in simply describing, telling one's story over and over again, which can be a way of holding on to grief about the past or holding on to narrative that places blame on others.