LEARNING TO LOVE

[Pravin Kumar]

Learning to Love:

Love is measured by the way a person behaves and by the way a person treats other people. It's impossible to act selfishly or in a self serving manner if the base of your life is to love.

It's often said that love is the true nature of life, but that doesn't mean it will be the base of every life. Look at some people like, Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, and Ted Bundy to name a few, ask their victims family if love was their true nature. Even myself prior to waking up, but not to that degree. I was very selfish, and most of my decisions made were to satisfy myself. It's not this way today because I learned the valuable lesson of what it means to love thy neighbor as thy self and I truly don't want to hurt anyone today, including myself. Love emanates as behavior and it can be measured by the way people treat each other. It's impossible to act selfishly or self serving if the base of one's life is to love.

I’ll use a story about my daughter to illustrate how I began to love. About nine years ago I was taking her on an overnight stay to a friends at the Jersey Shore. Thirty miles into the trip she told me she forgot here bedding. When the anger arose as it always had when things didn't go my way, the one thing that stuck out more than anything was I didn’t want to hurt my daughter; I also knew if I hurt her I would be hurting me. So because of this awareness there wasn't the normal yelling, we just turned around and headed back home to get her bedding. When I didn't react in anger, I knew my view of life was different and I knew the difference was I was learning how to love. When you can truly be with life as it is and accept yourself blemishes and all, you will know you are truly on a road not only less travelled, but one that leads to loving thy neighbor as thy self.

Michael Cupo