Are you Starved for Love
Begging for love makes you more of a beggar. If you are starved for love, it is not because enough people do not love you but because you are not expressing your love to enough people. Starvation of love does not cease by receiving love, but ceases only by giving love.
If you are starved for love, it is not because enough people do not love you but because you are not expressing your love to enough people.
There is a lady in every home, who wakes up earlier than the rest of you and sleeps later than all of you. She does not have casual leave, privilege leave or sick leave. No holidays and no rest days.
Could you surprise her with a gift of love in this month of Valentine’s Day?
There is an old man in the house, who has been on his feet all his life for the sake of his family, worked and worked and kept working, much after he had earned enough for himself. A man who ensured in every possible way that each one in the family would have a better standard of life than what he had.
Could you go beyond the curtains of ego you had drawn between him and you, and demonstrate your love for him in unexpected ways in this month of Valentine’s Day?
There must be a teenage boy or girl in your very home, who isn’t sure, whether you are looking at them as a child or as an adult. Your stance seems to have so much of dual standards, which is so paradoxical to a teenager.
Can you take your daughter/son on a date, take time with them, befriend them and show them in ways that they understand that you care for them, that you love them beyond their comprehension and that they mean everything to you. Could this be your way of celebrating this month of Valentine’s Day with a difference?
Could you go back to your Alma Mater and meet your teachers who served as a turning point in your life and give them letters of love and gratitude? In this month of Valentine’s Day, can you make some of the people who created and recreated you feel extra special?
Above all, can you stop being your own enemy and learn to love yourself? For so many reasons and in so many ways, you stand against yourself, time and again. Can you become more charitable towards yourself, forgive yourself of your past and accept yourself as you are? Can a new love affair, where you are the lover and you are also the beloved begin from this month of Valentine’s Day?
Let the usual festivity of Valentine’s Day continue, but shall we also bring an extended meaning to this month of Valentine’s Day? Let your love cleanse your life and the life of all the people in your influence.
Love is love, only when it respects the feelings of the other. When we do not recognise the feelings of the other, we make them feel like a thing, a commodity. You love others, not for who they are; but for what you can be when you are with them.
Others too love you, not for who you are; but for what they can be when they are with you. By respecting their feelings, you make them feel respected.
Love is an end in itself. You love because you love, and not for the reciprocation of love.
The child comes home crying having lost his pencil in the school. What the child needs now is an adult at home, who in some way can make the child feel that his feelings are respected; but what the child gets is an intellectualisation on whether or not crying is appropriate for something so trifle. The girl cries in the classroom for she has missed her centum in maths by one mark.
What the girl needs right now is some gesture from the teacher or classmates that they understand her feelings; but what she gets is advice on why she should not let small things bother her. The teenager is interested in someone from the opposite sex.
What he needs is someone in his life who matters to him, who’ll show him that they understand his sentiments and recognise his feelings; but what he gets is someone philosophising on infatuation. The wife pours her heart out about what she had gone through in the day.
What she needs is the lap of her husband to sob, his shoulders to cry on and a hand that can wipe her tears and say, “I understand darling…” but what she gets is a special executive seminar on human relationship. Some gestures, some noise and some one-liners keep coming from the aged parents to suggest that they are not feeling okay.
What they need now are eyes that show care, a touch that confirms ‘I am there for you’ and ears willing to empathise with their feelings; but they get a rational explanation on positive attitude.
Love is recognised as Love, only when we respect the feelings of the other. Whether those feelings are right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate… is secondary. Their primary need is to know, ‘Do you respect my feelings?’
Erroneously, out of our love for them, we assume that we should solve whatever they are going through and approach every situation with loads of intelligence. People will open up to your solutions only if they know that these solutions are coming from people who love them.
And they will recognise that you love them only if they see that you respect their feelings. Love must feed the heart first before it even attempts to feed the mind.
Starvation of love is in essence starvation of touch. Love and touch are synonymous. When the child was in the womb of the mother, he kept experiencing a oneness with his mother only through the sensation of touch. Much before the child learns to perceive stimuli through the other senses, he recognises the stimulus of touch.
Every time the child cries out of insecurity, some adult holding the child close to his bosom comforts him. Children grow in the arms, shoulders and the lap of adults. Hugging is the most intimate of all experiences for a child. To every child, touch is oneness and this oneness is their primary understanding of love.
However, as children grow, we adults, withdraw ourselves from touching them. We start relating TO them rather than relating WITH them. Once we stop touching them, they become touch starved and this makes them love starved.
True, you may be providing them everything materialistically; while the mind of your child will recognise all these so called expressions of love, the heart keeps longing for touch. After all, it is not by the amount of money or by the quantum of gifts or by the verbosity of language that the heart grew in love and oneness.
It knew oneness only by touch and it grew in love only by touch. Every adolescent, who has fallen into the ugliness of perversion, is a case of a child who has been rendered touch-starved by the family.
It does not matter whether it is a parent-child relationship or a husband-wife relationship or a brother-sister relationship… unless there is non-sexual touch in a relationship, there may still be a lot of respect in the relationship but the presence of love in that relationship will not be recognised.
If you want to save your children from joining the ‘World Perversion Club’, bring enough non-sexual touch into your relationship. If you want to bring back the excitement in marriage, bring back enough non-sexual touch into your relationship.
If you want to bring back those intimate days you shared with your parents, bring back enough non-sexual touch into your relationship. Lean on their shoulders, take them in your lap, hold their hands in yours, place your head on their lap and experience the river of tears that flow once again in love.
If you miss it now, then you will one day touch the dead body and cry your love out; but then it will be too late. People who cry the loudest at a funeral are usually the ones who did not touch enough the one who died, when that person was alive?
Even the kings, the queens and the legends crave for this touch of love; after all, they too have the same heart of a human being, as yours and as mine. So, what makes you think that your father or your mother-in-law may be an exception?
Relationship is about communication, but love is about communion; and communion is only possible through touch. Nothing deepens love like touch, and nothing starves love like touch starvation.
Call out to your loved ones, “I don’t think my empty arms can hold out any longer… come… come to me.”
Apart from respecting the feelings of those you love and practicing enough non-sexual touch in the relationship, ask every day, “How can I, through my expression of love, make someone’s heart blossom today?” The economics of love is that it fills the heart of both the giver and the receiver. So, you do not love for reciprocation of love. “If you love me, then…” “I know you love mummy, so please…” “Okay, I will do this for you because I love you, but then…” These are not expressions of love, but vulgar transactions made in the name of love.
Love transacted is not love at all. Love should never be a means. Love is an end in itself. You love because you love, and not reciprocation of love.
Also remember, if it hurts then there is love in that relationship. People ask, “Why do people we love hurt us?” The very question is wrong. Hurt is a confirmation that there is love in that relationship. If that comment or gesture was made by a stranger, it would not have even scratched your heart.
The very fact that it has is a confirmation that it has come from someone you love. Love hurts; if it hurts then it is love. If we give up love because it hurts, then our alternatives are only loneliness, despair and death. Who said love is all laughter? It is tears too.
After all, love can never be either this OR that; it is this AND that. Love is an all-inclusive package.
Even a small pebble or a blowing wind can disturb the moon’s reflection in the lake. It shatters into thousands of pieces all over the lake and as the lake settles down, it again appears as the moon. Actually, the real moon was never disturbed; only its reflection was.
True love is exactly the same. Hurt is the ripples, but with time, love settles down to confirm that love was, love is and love will be.
The only word big enough to accommodate love is LIFE. Love is the only gospel needed, for nothing other than love can transform the world. Nothing is more cleansing than love. If you miss love, you miss life.
Do not make love the special prerogative of Jesus Christs, Mother Teresas and Buddhas. Love is neither patented to anyone nor is it the sole property of a few. If God is love, and God created this existence with the energy of love, and if God created every human being after his own image, then Love is me, Love is you and Love is us.
Let us together build a loving, lovable and lovely world. It starts with us.
