The Lesson of Love
It has been over a year since my nephew died–he ended his own life. I was in the Norte Dame Cathedral in Paris, France for the anniversary of my loss. As I lit a candle for my nephew and sat down to contemplate, I asked what the takeaway from this anniversary can be. Then, it hit me like lightening–an epiphany: He did not like his life, therefore, I should learn to love mine.
It is easier said than done. You wake up in the morning and you run through the list of perhaps many unpleasant things you have to do and unpleasant people you have to meet that day. This means that learning to love your life is not easy. To ease the situation, when I woke up every morning, I listed all the good things that might happen that day. Also, I Iistened to a ten-minute affirmation on happiness and the song by Pharrell Williams called “Happy”. Once I sat the tone for the day, it was easier to love my life. In a month, I managed to actually believe that life is wonderful and that I love my life. Big change!
Dealing with people is a greater challenge, though. After all, there are seriously difficult and annoying people in the world. How can I love my life if there are difficult and annoying people in this life? But I took a leap of faith. Although I am not religious in any conventional sense, I decided to learn to love and forgive people. I went through all the people in my mind who hurt me, sent them love from my heart, and then let them go from my soul. Usually, the one you resist the most is the one that really needs a lot of love and forgiveness. (Many times, they are the closest to you.) After, I tried to list the good things in people around me. I reasoned that I should love them with all their flaws because they (hopefully) love me with all my flaws. It worked. I felt that life was even more wonderful and I love life even more.
Since I am a philosopher, I would like to share part of a theory that I really cherish now. According to John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart, the self’s journey is guided by love. The interest of the spiritual self is to express the love that binds them together because one day we will reach the end of our journey where we will exist as spirits in the infinite goodness of love. Although his philosophy is very complex before he gets to this argument, I believe that this part sounds about right.
What is next? I have to learn, as Taylor Swift suggests, to “shake it off” when something not so pleasant happens. Since I love my life more, it is actually getting easier. After all, as Swift says, “the players gonna play, play, play, play, and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate. Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, I shake it off, I shake it off”. (Who knew that Taylor Swift was a bit of a philosopher?)
Anyway, the point is that all the people who prefer to blame and hate others, including the closest to them, I don’t care to listen to their grumbling, fault finding, finger-pointing, and whining anymore. I will just shake it off. I choose to love my life, which includes loving and forgiving others, seeing their good qualities (even if I am aware of the bad ones), and believing that life is great.
I thank my nephew in the beyond for teaching me this lesson. Although I would have preferred that he stayed in this life with us, at least, his loss had a good outcome; his loss was not in vain.
M. J. Mandoki
