The phrase, love is the answer, has been used so much that people think it trite, but when you dig deep and consider life's issues with care, you realize that love is the answer--it is the one aim that leads us forward in all aspects of our lives.
Great leaders throughout time have recognized the tremendous power of living a loving life--they know that this is the single path to betterment. The challenge is to think deeply about what love is and how to make love an active path in your life.
We can start by asking the question, Is this love, before every decision, action, and word we speak. Then we can think more deeply about troubled areas of living, areas where it is not as simple to determine how loving action is demonstrated.
To love oneself, is to act in loving ways with regard to your personal choices, how you spend time, and whom you spend time with. To love yourself is to make the kinds of decisions that lead to a healthy body, healthy mind, healthy associations, and good living overall. We have to see through the messages of self-serving folks, manipulative advertising, and bogus endeavor to choose wisely and lovingly for our own lives.
To love others is to think deeply about who they are, what they need, and how you can love and serve them. One of the greatest mistakes we make when it comes to loving others is to project our own needs, answers, and values on others rather than to carefully listen to who they are and what they need. This has happened to me often in life. I may think that a particular person needs this or that, and then work to provide what I think they need. As you probably understand, that is not love--love, instead, listens to the person, asks what he/she needs/desires, and then works to fulfill that. Specifically as I think of someone in my midst whom I can love better, I am realizing that I have never asked that person, What can I do to help you? I've never made the time for that integral conversation.
Sometimes to love someone is to step back and realize you don't have what that person needs or wants--at this point, the best way to love is to give that person the space they need to make new acquaintances and follow new paths to love themselves, love others, and receive the kinds of love they need.
Love is a verb, it's an action that's deep, challenging, and positive. When we make Is this love our mantra, we choose and live better for ourselves and for others. Love is the answer.
