Love, Love, Love.

12 - All You Need Is Love.mp3 -

I have not had a morning like this in quite a while. It all started when I decided to go to sleep at about 12:45am, maybe a little later. Despite sleeping almost all day yesterday, I was actually really tired and looking forward to going to sleep. Unfortunately, my brain decided it was going to have one of those “you’re not sleeping because I’m going to sit here and think think think till you reach some sort of epiphany” nights. So I laid in my bed for five hours or so listening to the Beatles and thinking about everything imaginable. Most of my thoughts were focused on the mess that I’ve become over the course of two weeks and the fact that I don’t want to feel like I have been any more. Of course I went right into “rationalization/explanation” mode and blamed it on a serotonin surplus and dopamine deficiency in my brain, not to mention the fact that I have been off my medicine for a while now. Thinking about that did not make me happy. I do this thing where I reduce everything down to some sort of psychobabble and call it a day. I’m not saying I’m wrong for doing that though because in all honesty, it is science and chemical imbalances in the brain are tough to dispute. But either way, I eventually decided that I didn’t want to be on my meds again- or at least not just yet. I have never been one to underestimate the power of the mind, so if my serotonin and dopamine levels are all out of wack, so what?! I believe there is power in the mind to overcome that (and if not enough to overcome it completely then enough to keep me going for a little while).

                By the time I come to this conclusion it was 5:45 in the morning and my alarm was screaming at me to get up for work. So I got out of bed feeling good (I’m not sure if it was happy, but it was definitely content). I got ready for work and rushed out the door because I was under the impression that I was going to be late.

Let me be the first to tell you that you cannot be late for work when you show up at 6:30am and realize your shift isn’t until 6:30pm.

                Yeah. I went to work twelve hours early. How’s that for punctual, huh? It wasn’t all that bad though. I mean, I was awake and obviously I wasn’t late for work. Not to mention I got a good laugh out of the entire thing. But most importantly I got to come home and enjoy the morning! I’m not a fan of waking up early because I tend to sleep horribly, but I have always loved mornings. It has something to do with the way the day feels fresh and new and perfect. Anyway, after I got back home from making a fool out of myself at work I decided to work on my homework because I knew sleep was just not going to happen. So I sat down to read the assigned reading for my World Religions class. The book, written by Thich Nhat Hanh is called Teachings on Love and is centered on the importance of love in our everyday lives and the Four Immeasurable Minds.

Before I knew it, it was 10:30 and I had read the entire book.

                It was very- and I don’t intend to play on the word here- enlightening. If I go into detail on this thing, I run the risk of writing my own book about Love. So instead, I’ve decided to quote the book and just leave you with the option of mulling them over in your mind and seeing what you can get from them on your own. Before I start typing those quotes out though, I want to say that I highly recommend this book to anyone; atheists, Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, everyone. Just because you don’t practice a religion or adopt it’s beliefs doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to learn from the ideas.

Enjoy!

“Until we are able to love and take care of ourselves, we cannot be of much help to others.”

“Feelings flow in us like a river, and each feeling is a drop of water in that river.”

“The moment you see how important it is to love yourself, you will stop making others suffer.”

“To love is to first of all accept yourself as you actually are.”

“To have a deep and direct understanding of another person, you must become one with him or her.”

“Don’t be angry at your anger. Don’t try to chase it away or suppress it. Acknowledge that it has arisen and take care of it.”

“Our notions of happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy.”

“In true love, there is no place for pride.”

“When we are irritated, we may say things that are destructive. So when we feel irritated, we should refrain from saying anything.”

“We see that the other person, like us, has both flowers and garbage inside, and we accept this…Our partner is a flower. If we take care of her well, she will grow beautifully. If we take care of her poorly, she will wither. To help a flower grow well, we must understand her nature.”

“That sanity of the body is the sanity of the mind; the violation of the body is the violation of the mind.”

“Where there is understanding, there is love.”

“We do not know everything. But we can minimize out ignorance. Confucius said, “To know that you don’t know is the beginning of knowing.””

“We can’t afford to love for less than twenty-four hours a day.”

“You may think happiness is possibly only in the future, but if you learn to stop running, you will see that there are more than enough conditions for you to be happy right now. The only moment for us to be alive in is the present moment. The past is already gone and the future is not here yet. Only in the present moment can we touch life and be deeply alive.”