One of our newsletter
subscribers wrote to us recently and made a
statement about relationships that we both
agree AND disagree with.
Here's what she said...
"Being in love with
someone is a job, a job you have and you
must do your best with, every day. It is not
easy, but we're in this life with one
reason--to learn how to do it."
We will certainly agree
that part of the reason we are all on this
earth is to learn to love--ourselves and
others.
We cannot agree,
however, that "being in love," loving
others, or being intimate with someone is a
job. When something is a "job," there's an
implication of it being hard work and a task
or group of tasks that need to be performed
to reach a goal.
Hopefully your
relationships aren't this way, but for most
people (at least in this country), their job
is something they do each day because they
have to (it's a means to an end) and not
because they want to.
Our feeling is that if
you approach being in love or loving others
as a job, it makes it somehow separate from
the rest of your life and something you "do"
to get what you want.
We think that being in
love and loving others is not a job or task
but rather becomes your entire being if you
allow it. It's also something you want to do
and not something you have to do.
We'll explain what we
mean...
Most of us have learned
how to love others (and ourselves) from role
models that have not been very successful in
this area of life--or maybe not successful
in the way we want to be.
Mostly unconsciously
from these role models, we've developed
habits of "loving" that turn out to not be
so loving and that simply haven't brought us
what we want in our lives.
So in our viewpoint, if
there's any "job" that we have around this
topic, it is to let go of old habits and
ways of thinking that have kept us
stuck--that have kept us from being the
loving beings that we truly are.
Being in love, being
intimate with someone and loving others is a
choice and decision that we make in every
moment and often we are making those choices
from those old habits.
Here's a story to
explain...
Last weekend, Susie
attended a 2-day conference by herself which
Otto would normally have attended. Because
it was his weekend to be with his high
school-aged son, Otto chose to honor that
commitment instead of attending the
conference.
These past few weeks,
Susie has been having some physical problems
that were certainly heightened by sitting in
a hot, crowded ballroom listening to speaker
after speaker at this weekend seminar. In
other words, on Saturday she had a pretty
negative attitude about the experience she
was having.
Saturday night, as she
was complaining on the phone to Otto, it
dawned on her that she had a choice as
whether to be loving and open the next day
at the seminar or to be stuck in her
physical discomfort.
She decided to attend
that day's seminar with the intention of
being open to meeting new people and
enjoying her day. She decided to change the
"habit" of closing herself when she's in
physical discomfort and allow her heart to
open to others.
What happened was that
she did have a much better day on Sunday as
a result of her decision and intention to
open to love and connection--no matter what.
It wasn't her "job" to
open. It was her attitude, intention and
decision to do so.
Is loving or intimacy
easy?
Certainly not
always...but here is what we have
discovered...
It is when you make a
decision and choice to open instead of
close, especially when things get tough,
that makes all the difference in your
relationships and life.
We know what opening
and closing to love mean to us and you have
to decide what they mean to you.
Then you have to be
courageous enough to challenge
your old habits and
beliefs that have held you back.
Being in love and
loving others and life is never a job. It's
our natural birthright. We've just forgotten
how to allow love to flow without
restriction in our lives.
In order to have the
depth of love that we know is possible,
"opening" more of the time than closing is a
must.
