Two weeks ago, I blogged about “Have you ever loved someone?”. Today I am going to talk about “being loved”.
One day I had lunch with a co-worker on my last day at a contract job. We were chatting about many things and she brought up the topic about her mom. She told me that sometimes she looked down on her mom. She felt that her mom did not give her sufficient care and it seemed to her that her mom loved her sister more. She gave me a few examples that demonstrated – from her perspective – that her mom loved her sister more. That bothered her and as a result made her annoyed about the things her mom did for her.
I have a compassion for her feeling as I used to feel the same way when I was a girl. I know how it sucks to feel that way. But I asked my co-worker: “Is it really important for you to know whether your mom loves you more or less than anyone or anything? Wouldn’t be enough just to know that you are being loved?”
I’m not going to continue the story in this blog, but I want to share some thoughts with you. Many times we spend so much energy wondering how much someone loves us. We want to quantify the love our parents, our husband, our wife, and our friends have toward us. Often the urge to quantify the love we receive is so strong that it turns into a feeling of insecurity, because we are not “loved enough”. And then we release that insecurity as frustration.
But there’s a better way. What if we stop trying to quantify the feeling people have toward us and focus on “Being Loved”. In a lifetime, there are not many people who ACTUALLY love us. If we spend time analyzing it, we can probably count these people on one hand. (You probably need to understand what love is before you can analyze this realistically.)
And sadly, this small group of people will over time pass away, leaving us with only the memory of their loves. While our time with them is still available, take time caring for each other and fully enjoying the moments you have together. So if they happen to die, you will not be regret that you should have done something more for them, been with them more often or even said “love” to them and called them up the way you’d like to when that is no longer possible.
We have energy. Use that energy unconditionally in the project of appreciating the love a person has for us. Using that energy only to quantify something whose value can never be truly estimated is not a good use of our limited time with the person who loves us.
Ask yourself: Who loves me?
And then start to appreciate their loves. It is very nice for them to know that you appreciate it.
Since the age of 35 and after the loss of a loved one, I came to the realization that life was meant to be lived freely and fully. I let go of everything I owned and finished the marriage that had been wrong for so long. I started my exploration of this world that I used to pay very little attention to and became a member of it. I now pay a great deal of attention to my friends, my family, and more importantly myself. I commit to do the right thing, and I strive to surround myself with people who believe as I do. So when my time comes to an end, I will be ready to leave this earth on any given day as a good person who is happy.
