Smart Reading
Summary: Amour – Amour – Amour. La puissance de l’acceptation. Lise Bourbeau
Автор:
Lise Bourbeau
Оригинальное название:
Amour – Amour – Amour. La puissance de l’acceptation
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What is true, unconditional love?
We call a great variety of relationships love, though they are not really love.
1. Pity and devotion, which are more often the result of a sense of duty, guilt or fear rather than love.
2. Passion and expressiveness. In such a relationship, one feels good only when the object of his or her passion is nearby. To achieve this, one tries to control the behavior of the other. One cannot accept that the other person is independent and self-sufficient. Such uncontrollable passion can ruin both people’s lives.
In addition, if one always looks for passion, it is impossible for him or her to get enough of it. In long-term relationships, it gradually subsides, and if one begins to look for new objects of passion, new partners, he or she destroys the connection with those who are nearby.
3. Strong affection, when one cannot be happy if his or her loved one is unhappy. As a result, striving to be happy, one tries to make the other person happy first (the one on whom his or her own state depends). That means that one partner imposes his or her will on the other partner and gets possessive.
Have the ability to be happy even when your loved ones are unhappy may seem selfish. But by giving up our happiness, we do not make others happier, we only become unhappy ourselves.
Real selfishness is manifested in something else. Selfishness is wishing that other people first care for your needs before looking after their own and believing that someone else, and not you, is responsible for your happiness.
By accepting that you (and not other people) must take care of yourself means that you recognize the same right and duty for other people. Nobody can make another person happy. Only people can make themselves happy. Happiness, like unhappiness, is one’s personal attitude toward what is happening in his or her life. It comes from within rather that from the outside.
It is difficult to agree with this, but the basis of unconditional love is the ability to let your loved one just be and to accept everything that happens to him or her, including misfortune.
But we are responsible for those who we have taken under our wing!
The concept of responsibility, which many people also interpret incorrectly, is closely related to the concept of love. The fact of the matter is, if we accept the premise that only people can make themselves happy or unhappy, then it follows that only people themselves are responsible for their happiness.
Therefore, to be responsible is to accept the consequences of your decisions and, just as importantly, to also allow others to reap the fruits of their decisions. You can only be responsible for yourself. When we feel responsible for other adults, we begin to control their behavior; we try to influence their decisions and actions. This is how we violate people’s boundaries, laying claim their independence and the right to manage their own life.
In addition, when we believe that we are responsible for someone, we always expect that these people will also take responsibility for us. But such an approach leads to a series of mutual expectations and disappointments. There is a happy mean between indifference and active attempts to make other people happy, and this is acceptance and unconditional love.
