the Delicate t Bone

15:02 18th Jan 2012

Notes: 5160

10 Ways to Love Others

Some guidelines for loving:

1. Tell them about their brilliance. They likely can’t see it and they don’t know its immensity, but you can see it, and you can illuminate it for them.

2. Be authentic, and give others the gift of the real you and a real relationship. Ask your real questions. Share your real beliefs. Go for your real dreams. Tell your truth.

3. Don’t confuse “authenticity” with sharing every complaint, resentment, or petty reaction in the name of “being yourself.” Meditate, write, or do yoga to work through anxiety, resentment, and stress on your own so you don’t hand off those negative moods to everyone around you. Sure, share sadness, honest dilemmas, and fears, but be mindful: don’t pollute.

4. Listen, listen, listen. Don’t listen to determine if you agree or disagree. Listen to get to know what is true for the person in front of you. Get to know an inner landscape that is different from your own, and enjoy the journey. Remember that if, in any conversation, nothing piqued your curiosity and nothing surprised you, you weren’t really listening.

5. Don’t waste your time or energy thinking about how they need to be different. Really. Chuck that whole thing. Their habits are their habits. Their personalities are their personalities. Let them be, and work on what you want to change about you—not what you think would be good to change about them.

6. Remember that you don’t have to understand their choices to respect or accept them.

7. Don’t conflate accepting with being a doormat or betraying yourself. Let them be who they are, entirely. Then, you decide what you need, in light of who they are. Do you need to make a direct request that they change their behavior in some way? Do you need to take care of yourself better? Do you need to set a boundary or to change the relationship? Take care of yourself well, without holding anyone else in contempt.

8. Give of yourself, but never sacrifice or compromise yourself. Stop if resentment is building and retool. Don’t do the martyr thing. It helps no one and nothing.

9. Remember that everyone you encounter was created by divine intelligence and has an important role to play in the universe. Treat them as such.

10. If you want to keep growing emotionally and spiritually for the rest of your life, accept this as your mantra and try to live as if it were true: Everything that I experience from another human being is either love, or a call for love.

What steps do you take to love others?

10:51 11th May 2011

Reblogged from crankyskirt

Tags: saudade longing nostalgia friendship ghosts

When we were friends

crankyskirt:

And the book says, “We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us!” - Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, Magnolia

Looking for some ancient paperwork in my email, I came across some old emails from a couple of dear friends, now gone. One deceased, and a couple others living but estranged. Read through all of them, because I like to reckon with ghosts, because my obsession with history extends not only to the global and the local, but also to the personal. Feeling pretty moved right now.

I cannot help but think of my friendships as love stories, because to me they are. They’re more valid and more vital than any of the romantic relationships I’ve ever had. I’ve learned from these people, leaned on these people, been welcomed into their homes and their hearts in ways that even now, leave me awestruck at my luck and their generosity. I think this is because I am loath to trust folks, and when it comes to each of my closest peoples, there was a moment, a click, some intuitive signal that said, “Keep tabs on this one, Ju.” It’s been that way since I was a kid, and I’ve yet to have that instinct lead me wrong, no matter the final result.

Which is why those who’ve been in my life and are now gone, got mourned so hard. My emotions are outsized when it comes to my loved ones. I’ve been sad over romantic relationships ending, but usually that involves binging on elaborate grief for a while, until I’m emptied out and ready to re-enter the world. Friend losses (usually by fadeouts; I can’t remember there being any angry platonic breakups, at least not with those I really loved) feel different to me… the grief is a low-level diffuse one, mixed in with nostalgia. Saudade. I don’t think about these losses most of the time, but the smallest of reminders - a stranger’s face, a phrase heard in passing - is enough stimulus to pull me back.

Every once in a while, when I’m praying, I throw in names of the folks I’ve lost, in the hopes that the calling of a name is enough to send my good wishes out into the void like radio waves. I do it out of a hope that we’ll encounter each other again, but mostly out of a belief that their present selves are even more brave and brilliant than when I knew them. I really hope that this is true of the ones still living, just as I hope that the ones who aren’t are at peace, out there in the ether somewhere.

In the meantime, I’ll read these long-ass, wonderful letters and then leave them to be found another time. Sometimes I forget the grace I’ve been shown by others when I most needed it, and I want to be able to return to who I was then, with those people, and be grateful for my past(s). Here’s to ghosts.

Ghosts indeed. I’ve a box of ephemera filled with the spirits of those long-gone - diaries, letters, locks of hair. There are days when I still feel them next to me. Days I hear their voices in my ears. I wish and I wish.

I’ve always wanted to know a word that adequately framed a feeling I have so often. Thank you for helping me find it - Saudade