A mother sitting at a park watching her son, Johnny, play T-ball with his friends. Johnny can’t swing as well as his friends but his mom sees him as precious, he is trying, he is working so hard, he has come such a long way. A love of a mother works that way.
A documentary talks about how some people establish relationships with prison inmates and fall in love and some even marry. Somehow, even the most misunderstood people of the world, have someone who loves them. Why?
Does the crazy person try harder to reach out to one person than to another? Is a mother totally biased because genetically speaking she is predisposed to love her child more? What makes someone be perceived as great by another?
I know it’s not Valentine’s Day yet and I hate to be corny, but it is love. Love changes how you view things.
The scientific method explains the phenomenon of observer effect. That which you are observing is changed by who observes it.
How does the scientific method apply to this you may ask? If you see someone a certain way, they will either rise or sink to meet your expectation.
Before you begin saying nay, let’s start on the same page.
We all communicate in different ways. We all communicate in words, body language, and even energetically. When someone walks into a room, you can interpret their attitude, their voice, tone and even pitch. When we come into a place where there is hostility, you can feel it, your tingly feelings pick up on it and you become aware and alert. Same thing happens when you run into someone you love and care for, before you have made it into their arms, you are already bathed in a loving feeling that suffuses every part of you and the moment is almost transformative.
So, how does this truly work?
Parents are the easiest examples around.
You have a baby and you are so happy that you have had her, you love her, and you have loved her since conception. You have pictured clearly in your head the times you will sit down and play tea with her and the dresses you will make her and the ballerina slippers she will wear as a young ballet debutante. You even had her name framed in the prettiest pink tulle.
The moment has arrived and she is here. You look into her eyes and know that she will be mom’s best friend and daddy’s little girl for the rest of her life. You bring the little princess back home and she cries, constantly and inconsolably, you call your mother, your doctor, the nurse and your best friend, Sandy who has a baby older than yours by just a week. They all tell you, don’t worry all babies are different; your baby is well fed, changed, and loved. It is just her personality.
At that moment, something happens to you. Your view begins to change, all of the things that don’t fit what you think she should be, become her personality. Oh My! She is so headstrong and independent someone mentions during mommy and me classes; you smile proudly, but keep it in the back of your head. Headstrong? Was that a compliment?
The same thing happens when she starts to walk, color, going to the park. She is active, into everything, not a moment’s peace for you. Tea party? HA! She breaks the little cups and runs away using the dress you made her as a rug to sit on the mud.
She goes to school and you get called in by the teacher.
Teacher: You know, sometimes we have a hard time with her.
Mom: I know, she is so headstrong and independent.
Teacher: Well, we need to do something; she is becoming disruptive and a problem.
You go home and you are so upset, this is NOT how you pictured it. Where is your pink loving baby? Why does she act like this? Finally, she comes to you; she wants to show you the dead frog she has outside by the tree. You look at this creature that came from you and say with all the love you are capable of giving and yet almost defeated, and you ask: why are you so difficult honey? Why can’t you be like the other little girls?
Of course you love your daughter, of course you will do anything for her, but she is so different, nothing like what you expected. As she grows, you try to mold her into your pink dreams and clouds and she chafes, she is more and more herself, you see her as alien and different. Your last view of her is as she jumps into a car with her friends at sixteen, after the last argument about how you don’t understand!
You have been told that she is headstrong and independent, and difficult in class and disruptive, you can’t connect with her and the worse part is that after all of your efforts, after all of the sacrifices and countless nights staring at the ceiling wondering what you will do with her, she doesn’t see that, she only sees that you don’t get her. How does she know that you don’t get her? How can she say that you don’t accept her?
Because she FEELS it!!! She can feel in her heart that you don’t accept her as she is, and so she removes herself from you. Because you, the observer, reject or do not understand, and you AFFECT the results.
Take the other end of the spectrum. A nurse grows up in a household with an alcoholic parent. She is aware of the cycles of this illness and understands addiction, she is compassionate because she has lived the process and believes, with all of her heart and all of the faith that she can muster for human kind that people will overcome.
As she walks through the ward, the patients flock to her. She has brought them chocolate chip cookies she baked for them last night. As she passes the cookies out, she talks to one each one of them, she makes eye contact with them and she fills her words with kindness and love. She decides that no matter how they got here or what it is that they do, that they are all wonderful fellow human beings and that they deserve to be believed in and loved and supported on their path. They can sense it, they know how she feels because her body language, her words, everything about her screams, “I accept you, I believe in you.”
Some of them stay away from her because they don’t believe in her love, her feelings. And patiently, she seeks them out. They reject her, they tell her that they are garbage, that they are the worse of society and that she cannot love them because they are unlovable. Unshaken in her believes, she reaches out for their hand, she puts a cookie in their hand and firmly, with a conviction that only “knowing” can give you, she tells them, “That is not true, I know you are more than you can see.”
Again, something happens inside that person. She sees something in me; she sees something that no one else has seen before. Perhaps she is not wrong, perhaps there is goodness inside me, and has always been there, just no one noticed. Perhaps, I can do this, perhaps…. And so begin they begin to hope and dreams of being more and rising to the occasion.
Human beings have basic needs. Maslow would have told you that they are food, shelter and clothing. I think it goes further, they need acceptance and love.
Acceptance and love come from a place within you of total unconditional presence.
What the heck does that mean?
It means that when you stand in front of someone, you come to them with no judgments, expectations, labels or ideas of how they should be or the things they should do. That means that you look at them compassionately and lovingly. It means you give your love and acceptance with empathy and compassion and with no requirement of reciprocity. Because it matters not what they do, there isn’t anything in the world they can do that will change the way you feel about them.
If you have labeled someone, you have not loved them unconditionally. They will stay within the limits of the labels you have placed on them and your relationship will not grow, it cannot. The chains of your judgment and labeling will forever limit them, even if you have done it with the best of intentions.
It is not easy to sit there and love someone that way. It means that you cannot take anything personal. Their growth pattern and decisions are entirely their own and you cannot interfere, you can offer advise and listen when they need you to, guide and parent, but unconditional love says that you must let them work it out because you believe them capable. This extends even to children, especially to children.
So, how does this all tie into the woman who was married to the triple homicide murderer in TX right before his execution? What does this have to do with Johnny and his mom?
Both of these women are able to see their beloved with perfect love and acceptance. They believe in them, they believe in the goodness in them and in the fact that even though these individuals are not perfect, they are wonderful and love-worthy individuals.
Wonderful essay, now what? Ok, ok, ok, I will spell it out.
STOP!!!
Labeling, judging, patronizing, expecting and letting your ego control the relationships you have with those around you.
Don’t label your children, let them be who they are and work with those around them to ensure that he can be his best within the environment he has to be in. Don’t break his spirit!!
Don’t judge your husband, he is a complete separate individual, and what makes you happy doesn’t make you happy. Honor him by trusting him to know what makes him happy and give him space to do the things he feels he has to do. A happy man can make a woman happy, can be a happy parent. An angry, resentful one, cannot.
Stop expecting for your parents to be who you thought they should have been, just realize that they did all they could do with the tools they had in the moment they were in.
This is not an excuse for irresponsible behavior, but an opportunity to stop sweating the small things. It is a chance to really be there for those you love, for those you care for by not putting ideas, your ideas and your judgments, before their feelings. It is an opportunity to listen not only with your ears, but with all of your heart.
How do you do this? Here are a few tips
Be present. When someone is talking to you, listen with all of your senses.
Be loving: Even if the message being delivered is not very nice, just repeat in your head that you do love that person and you choose not to react to this because you don’t know what is going on with them.
Be loyal: To the way you know they can be, to the love-filled person you know they are.
Be patient: Lovingly accept and do not rush, some people are not used to thinking of themselves as wonderful and love-worthy, give them time to adapt.
Why am I telling you this? Because it’s time. It’s time we stop blaming the world, the universe, the 60s and everything else for what is going on. Somehow we have all created the problems in society; it will take all of us to heal it and to move forward. The prison inmate who found his soul mate is just as deserving of love as Johnny, perhaps, he needed it more.
We all deserve love. We all deserve to know what its like to know that someone has your back and that they will stand by you. We deserve that, all of us, even the man that was taken to the death chamber and cried one single solitary tear for his new bride as the lethal injection stopped his heart.
This is not a recipe for world peace. We are confrontational beings; world peace is still a few evolutionary steps away. But love, love was innate, it is primeval, it was in your heart and it is what you brought here. Love is at the basis of creation and it gives you a foundation to build life upon. Love allows you to see people as perfect and whole, wonderful loving beings that make mistakes and learn. You teach yourself to see people as dynamic expressions of love.
Look at them with the eyes of love, because they deserve it. Look at them with the eyes of love, because it is who YOU are. Look at live with the eyes of love and there will be no choice but to be surrounded by love. And so the song goes….
All you need is love…..
