Daily Inspiration 9-4-18

"What we profess,

what we think,

and what we do

may all be in different camps"

-- Albert K Strong

[Classic post from 7-18-14]

Have you ever seen, or been in a loving family where brothers, sisters, parents, children get angry with another and then hold on to their own righteousness as if it is the correct response? Obviously, one is making choices that are upsetting the other, but the real question is why? And an even better question is where is the love?

I can totally understand that someone else's choice is not one that I might make, but to disagree and call it wrong, and then to hold on to it at the expense of the relationship is absurd. They might even say that we are selfish in our choice, but the true selfishness is not in making the choice but trying to get others to live according to our own opinion.

What is the downside to loving people where they are and for who they are and celebrating their choices, whatever they may be? The only downside is our own bruised ego. But, how can we love and not actually love? How do we define love? Would that be how we would want to be loved? Obviously, much of what we call love is conditional love. If you do what I think you should do then I will love you and if you do not, and I cannot change your mind, then I don't want to have anything to do with you.

The best answer I have ever found is loving unconditionally. As Wayne Dyer taught me so well with this quote, it is a choice. It is not automatic. We get to choose each and every time. "Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you." Love is the ability and willingness. . . Some are not so willing it seems. Allowing others the respect, dignity, and authority to make their own choices, and then let me love them no matter their choices, no matter their agreement with or disagreement with my own. It is the only way that makes any sense if we want to call it love.

Yet, as important as this is to learn a better definition of love and how to love people, it is the willingness to actually practice it that will have it become part of our lives. We will always have things in other people we will disagree with no matter whether it is family, or outside of the family, but we can learn to let them be as they choose without any insistence that they satisfy us. Insisting they satisfy us is the height of selfishness so we can practice letting go of our resistance to what the other thinks and does by remembering that it isn't really them at all. It is us. We are creating the resistance in ourselves. It is our own thinking that creates the divide or learns to love.


How Important Would Your Disagreement Be If The One You Disagreed With Were To Die This Afternoon?

Spread Some Joy Today--Just let it go. Joy is downstream.