Thought for the Week -
In this season of giving, love is our gift. Love is a gift we can give to our family and friends. In giving love we share in the happiness and joy that love brings.
There are a few types of love, warm love, unconditional love and compassion or non judgmental love.
Warm Love
Warm love, we give to our family and friends and those close to us. This love often requires energy of us to become involved with the people we love. For this reason we only have a limited amount of it. We need to be aware of what we can handle and not burn ourselves out.
For example if we have a spouse or parent we care for, we will treat them in a caring and thoughtful manner. We will do favours, chores and work for them. We do these out of love for them, without expecting them to repay us but we do expect respect and kindness from them in return.
This type of warm love can be ‘conditional’. That is, there are conditions attached to the love we give. If we do a job for a person we expect something in return. This is normal in a marriage or close relationship. Where one person may do a lot of the heavy, physical work and the other does the lighter jobs. One person goes out to work to earn money while the other looks after the family and household.
Unconditional Love
Unconditional love has no conditions. That is, if we do something for a person, we don’t expect anything in return. We do it because the joy in giving or the happiness the task beings is reward enough for us. Sometimes it can be like acting as a secret agent for love. We do things which bring a benefit but nobody ever sees the how it happens.
For example, as we walk through a shop and notice an item has fallen off its shelf, we replace it. There is a friend I know who does random acts of kindness. He sometimes cleans bathrooms or toilets. His attitude is to leave a place better than when he went into it.
Compassion or non judgmental love
This kind of love often involves just being nice and courteous to the people we meet in our daily lives. It also involves our attitude to people. How do we regard people? If we see a person begging on the street do we assume they are alcoholics, drug users or outcasts of society? If we have the attitude of seeing that person as someone going through a few hard lessons at the moment, we can be a little compassionate towards them. We all have our lessons to learn, at times some people have tougher times than others in their lives.
There are two benefits to this kind of compassion. If we can change our attitude towards people from negative to something positive. The person who we are regarding will pick up on a sub conscious level your positive thoughts and they’ll see life a little brighter. For us, we will not have a negative attitude within ourselves and will be happier with the positive attitude.
Love is our gift
So the love we have for our family and friends, as well as the people we casually meet in our daily lives, is a gift for them and us. All the people in our lives, give us an opportunity to use our gift of love.
May Love be your gift for Christmas.
*Ed P
