Peace, Love, and Happiness - Part 2

Peace, Love, and Happiness. OK, so you’ve done the work to get a little peace in your life. Let’s look at Love. That’s something we all want. We want to find someone that will love us and love us and love us. Right? What if I told you, WRONG! You see, the old song was right. “Looking for Love in all the wrong places.” Or, if you are an Eddie Murphy fan, “Wokin pah nup in ah dah wong paces.”

What do I mean exactly? Simple. We are taught that it is another’s responsibility to love us and thereby find happiness. Wrong! Sorry, try again next time. I hate to see this message propagated throughout every medium in the world. TV, movies, music, books, commercials, Internet, hell, even daily conversations amongst people. Everyone seems to have bought into this fallacy. We have an entire, multi-billion dollar, industry that has been built around this concept. We have speed dating, 5 minute dates, online dating, dating classes, relationship magazines and gurus. All done in the name of finding true love and the love of your life. Guess what? It’s all CRAP!

Look at some of the other facts of the world today. Depending on your source the divorce rate in America is 41-50% for the first marriage, 60-67% for the second, and 73-74% for the third. Boy talk about not being able to learn from mistakes.  OK, so what’s going on here?! People are supposed to be getting married because they LOVE each other, right? What does that mean for love? Is it all just a big scam? Shall we blame all the jeweler commercials? Romance novels? Movies? Nah. That would be wrong and, even, a little too easy. Life is NEVER that easy.

So, what’s happened to love? Well, follow me if you would and see if this just might make a little bit of sense to you. You can’t give something that you don’t have. I know, it’s still a little simple, but it’s VERY big in what it contains. I believe that the problem with love in our world right now, is that we, as a people, have lost our capacity to love ourselves. I’m not talking about the egotistical and narcissistic kind of love that is just downright weird. I’m talking about a healthy and whole love and respect for your own self.

I read once somewhere, that 56% of American families are considered dysfunctional. Is it any wonder that we have lost our ability to honestly love ourselves? We exist in a world that is steeped in a selfish materialism that leaves very little room for much else. We are inundated with the ideas that to be loved we must:

Look like a supermodel or a professional athlete.
Be rich and/or famous.
Be a musician or rockstar.
Have some attribute that makes us more than the everyday man or woman, or find the money to buy one.

Look around if you don’t believe me. How often is the hero of a love story a plain average Joe or Jill? Or the hero in an action flick balding or a little pudgy ‘round the middle? It just doesn’t happen. Sure, we may be able to logically think about it and know that life’s not like that. But our minds take in everything and it all gets sorted and ordered automatically. And it all goes to support something that we believe, whether we’re logical about it or not.

You can’t give something you don’t have. What does this really mean? Before you can ever, and I do mean EVER, love someone else, you have to love yourself first. I know, I know. I hear many of you already saying, I do! And I still can’t find anyone to love me. Guess what? I’m going to say that you’ve got a bit more work to get to the point of loving yourself. We all do. It’s nothing to worry about or be ashamed of. I don’t know of one single person that hasn’t done something that they hated themselves for. It seems that everyone gets tired of themselves every now and then. Time alone for some people is the worst possible punishment.

Have you ever dated yourself? OK…that just sounds silly. Everyone, when they “fall” in love wants to spend every moment with their lover. They want to talk with them, take them out, share everything with them. Can you do that with yourself? I will admit, it is a hard thing to do. But until you can come to the point of loving to be with YOU, how in the world can you expect anyone else to?

It’s work well worth doing. After all, you are the only one that has to live with you for your entire life. Like yourself, forgive yourself, support yourself, encourage yourself, and learn to love yourself.

I will learn to love you too.