QUESTION: When was the last time that you spoke about love, with the conversation going deeper than saying, “I love you”?
- This week
- This year
- Can’t remember
QUESTION: How significant is love as a priority in your life? (Consider different forms of love, including romantic, familial, platonic, etc.)
- Not important
- Important
- Super important
QUESTION: How much love are you sharing with your loved ones on any given day?
- Low
- Medium
- High
I’ve been rereading Thomas Moore’s bestselling book, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, and I was struck by this comment:
It is clear that love is never simple, that it brings with it struggles of the past and hopes for the future, and that it is loaded with material that may be remotely—if at all—connected to the person who is the apparent object of love.
Wow. After chewing on the latter part of that sentence, I summarized his statement as follows: We bring parts of ourselves to relationships that have nothing to do with your loved one.
Expanding on this viewpoint, perhaps negative feelings and thoughts about others are rooted in our own experience and have little to do with the other person. From a personal standpoint, this would mean that when I find myself troubled with a loved one, I better look in the mirror.
Now for the extreme… If our thoughts and feelings about our loved ones are based upon our unrecognized fears, then by implication when considering world affairs, countries need to begin by looking inward.
IT’S ABOUT YOU:
- How did you react to Thomas Moore’s statement?
- How would you summarize his statement and what does it mean to you?
- What impact could an alternative viewpoint on love have on your relationships?