The emotion of Love, is one of the first emotions that most of us receive as children. As children we share our emotions freely and express it constantly, sometimes to the distress of our parents. Our parents and society in general don’t know how to deal with our emotions, so we get conditioned into not expressing certain parts of ourselves. It is the expression that nurtures us and provides us a sense of belonging and wellbeing. Love becomes a source of motivation and energy as we grow, and start to experience life, we keep searching and looking for it in all the spaces we touch. But Love in real life is not absolute, it is difficult to appreciate the depth of love without experiencing intensity of hatred. In this journey of love and hate the quest is to find a balance and acceptance of both within ourselves. To say I am full of love but do not experience hatred is like saying, that an object in light can be without a shadow. In this blog I am considering hatred as an shadow of love, but I do not refute that it could be vice versa. The full potential of love can be experienced with the complete experience and acceptance of hatred. Most of us remain in the cusp, not experiencing either of the emotion in its full intensity. Sometimes we are scared of what will manifest if we were to really experience these emotions fully inside of us. So we live in an obscure denial of our own emotions and feelings, safe in superficial conversations, which are easy to deal with. We are constantly searching for a high. We drink, smoke, take drugs to experience a high on life, but once the effect of these extraneous agents has dissipated we are back into the devastating grind of routine. We remain unaware of the fact that acceptance and experience of our emotions fully can give us a natural high that our souls crave for.
The expression of hatred or love towards something or someone attracts attention, unnecessary perspectives and interpretations, which we are not ready to deal with, so there is no authentic expression. We lack confrontational skills and ability to deal with its after effects and we can’t let go. Even in best of friends, we play safe, anything that will attract any attention is kept out of conversations, except when it is about someone else. Someone who is not present. We also don’t discuss, ourselves enough, our feelings, thoughts, observations of self, amongst friends. I don’t want to sound like a boring purist in this context, so yes we all enjoy some gossip and creative bitching, but only that and no sharing of self reflections, kind of takes the awareness out of the friendship. Consciousness of who we are, sharing that consciousness with our friends can make a friendship deeper and more nourishing. Bringing awareness of love, hatred and other emotions that we experience can increase the dimensions of our interactions with our friends. Embracing our friends for who they really are and what they experience can enrich our life and get us to a energy high, that no drink can bring.
In this New year I pray to God to gift me and all my friends
The Courage to face our fears,
The Courage to share our sorrows,
The Courage to ask for love to heal the hurt,
The Courage for compassion to deal with our anger,
The Courage to show our Joy in its full magnificence,
and finally Self-Love.
Image Courtesy: http://lileviljess.deviantart.com/art/Love-and-Hate-213470998
The Colored Mist 