The more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are for loving in the present.
- Barbara de Angelis
Love, it is widely believed among those who do not place money before everything, is the most important achievement, state and emotion we can have in life. Yet as much as we treasure it, true love remains elusive for many people. Some live their whole lives without really experiencing true love.
Most of those who live their whole lives without knowing true love develop a concept of what love is. But in the end it remains mostly like a business arrangement, give and take, needs must be met on both sides, some can't give enough and others don't know how. Relationship splits are common.
The easiest way to understand true love is to have received it as a child. Though the love of parents is seldom appreciated for its worth at the time (little is because it's all within the concept of what life is), the experience may be carried forward into adulthood. We can only share with others emotions we have experienced and childhood is the best place to experience love for the first time.
However, as de Angelis said, even those who have the ability to experience and to give true love may not be able to do either if they hold anger, grudges or hurt in their hearts.
Let's put this as simply as possible: all negative emotions are self imposed and are always self destructive if they last more than a few minutes.
If we don't believe in masochism as a value in others, then we should have the strength to declare it unnecessary in ourselves.
Hurting ourselves, by whatever means, is self destructive. Worse, it disables us from being able to experience and appreciate most positive things in life. It certainly makes us unable to experience and to share love.
Those who hold onto hurt, grudges and anger are strong of will. They refuse to give up that which hurts themselves, even if they know they are doing it to themselves. It's a kind of addiction and like all addictions it's all in the mind. It can all be controlled by the mind.
The mind can imprison itself, as I suggested above. It can also free itself and open itself to a world of experiences.
An open mind is perceived by many to be at risk, whereas a closed mind is less so, even though the closed mind is self destructive. However, like any other new lifestyle, learning to live with an open mind can be accomplished.
For a final comment I will call this an opinion, even though I know it to be fact, so that I don't have to quote scientific studies. Virtually all exceptionally old people I have met--in person or through the media--have had open minds. That can't be genetically linked as that wouldn't make sense. It must be a life choice. Coincidence? I don't think so.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, striving to make the complicated things in life a little easier to understand.
Learn more at http://billallin.com