LOVE, THE ESSENCE OF FAMILY
What is love ― real, lasting love?
Love is the attachment that results from deeply appreciating another's goodness.
Love is the result of appreciating another's goodness.
The word "goodness" may surprise you. To the Jewish mind, it isn't unexpected at all. What we value most in ourselves, we value most in others. God created us to see ourselves as good (hence our need to either rationalize or regret our wrongdoings). So, too, we seek goodness in others. Nice looks, an engaging personality, intelligence, and talent (all of which count for something) may attract you, but goodness is what moves you to love.
LOVE IS A CHOICE
If love comes from appreciating goodness, it needn't just happen ― you can make it happen. Love is active. You can create it. Just focus on the good in another person (and everyone has some). If you can do this easily, you'll love easily.
Obviously, there's a huge distance from here to the far more profound, personal love developed over the years, especially in marriage. But seeing goodness is the beginning.
By focusing on the good, you can love almost anyone.
ACTIONS AFFECT FEELINGS
Now that you're feeling so warmly toward the entire human race, how can you deepen your love for someone? The way God created us, actions affect our feelings most. For example, if you want to become more compassionate, thinking compassionate thoughts may be a start, but giving charity will get you there. Likewise, the best way to feel loving is to be loving ― and that means giving.
While most people believe love leads to giving, the truth is exactly the opposite: Giving leads to love.
What is giving? When an enthusiastic handyman happily announces to his non- mechanically inclined wife, "Honey, wait till you see what I got you for your birthday ― a triple-decker toolbox!" that's not giving. Neither is a father's forcing football lessons on his son because he himself always dreamed of being a footballer.
True giving, as Erich Fromm points out, is other-oriented, and requires four elements.
1. Care, demonstrating active concern for the recipient's life and growth.
2. Responsibility, responding to his or her expressed and unexpressed needs (particularly, in an adult relationship, emotional needs).
3. Respect, "the ability to see a person as he [or she] is, to be aware of his [or her] unique individuality," and, consequently, wanting that person to "grow and unfold as he [or she] is."
4. These three components all depend upon the fourth, Knowledge. You can care for, respond to, and respect another only as deeply as you know him or her.
OPENING YOURSELF TO OTHERS
The effect of genuine, other-oriented giving is profound. It allows you into another person's world and opens you up to perceiving his or her goodness. At the same time, it means investing part of yourself in the other, enabling you to love this person as you love yourself.
The more you give, the more you love.
Because deep, intimate love emanates from knowledge and giving, it comes not overnight but over time ― which nearly always means after marriage. The intensity many couples feel before marrying is usually great affection boosted by commonality, chemistry, and anticipation. These may be the seeds of love, but they have yet to sprout. On the wedding day, emotions run high, but true love should be at its lowest, because it will hopefully always be growing, as husband and wife give more and more to each other.
A woman I know once explained why she's been happily married for 25 years. "A relationship has its ups and downs," she told me. "The downs can be really low ― and when you're in one, you have three choices: Leave, stay in a loveless marriage, or choose to love your spouse."
Dr. Jill Murray (author of But I Love Him: "Love is a behavior." A relationship thrives when partners are committed to behaving lovingly through continual, unconditional giving ― not only saying, "I love you," but showing it.
LOVE IS FAMILY
Feeling the security and constancy of love from a spouse, a parent, friend, colleague or a child is a rich blessing.
Affection and love in the family is quite natural and must to have elements to promote the harmony and positive growth of the family. It is the deep affection that makes parents inclined to the sacrifices of growing up kids, perform household activities and meet the financial requirements. If the affection factor is absent no one would have lived dedicatedly for the family.
The affection obligates parents to take pain of looking after the kids and similarly, kids to love and obey the parents. Constantly nurturing the affection in the family is essential to keep the bond of love between the members of the family strong. It is the unmatched affection that creates the belongingness in the family life.
The affection expressed within the family is not benevolence but a commitment. Verbal expressions of affection, quality time spent with the family, gifts, mutual services, affectionate touch etc... are the most advised modes of nurturing the affection in the family between the family members.
NECESSITY:
1. Expression of Affection.
2. Spending Time Together: We build deep and loving family relationships by doing simple things together, like family dinner and family home evening and by just having fun together. In any relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e, time. Taking time for each other is the key for harmony at home. We talk with, rather than about, each other. We learn from each other, and we appreciate our differences as well as our commonalities.
3. Mutual Services
4. Affectionate Touch: Experts say that an affectionate touch nurtures love and attachment among the family members. Physical touch is always positive and it helps in transferring the emotion and feelings between the family members. Physical touch, here, doesn't refer to a sexual overtone. When it comes to the aspect of touch between the spouses, sexual touch is essential, but between parents and kids or between siblings the physical touch means a hug, kiss, or just a patting.
Actions like hug, kiss, patting, shake hand etc., directly convey how you feel for them and care them. They are well appreciated ways of expressing affection, especially in the family. Kids get great encouragement and confidence from a proper physical touch of affection. It also conveys a nearness of the dear ones and always being there for them.
Since we are a product of the family we come from, it would be a lot easier on our children if we start teaching them how to love and forgive amidst quarrel, hatred, rancor, malice and choose to forgive and make the world a better place.
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