Health & Fitness
How to Love Someone Senseless
Who would you like to like? Unlike the conventional thinking, we don't always follow our hearts. More often, we actually lead our hearts to where we would like them to be.
Who would you like to like?
Who would you like to despise?
It's no secret: We choose how we would like to feel about specific people and then go about cultivating those feelings. Unlike the conventional thinking, we don't always follow our hearts. More often, we actually lead our hearts to where we would like them to be.
Find out what's happening in Calabasaswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
But if we are leading our hearts, what is directing us when we lead? Why do we want to love one person and refuse to love another? Why do we (sometimes) relish hearing gossip about certain people, but bristle when people speak even mildly critically about others?
It is because beneath the love and the hate, there is a deeper factor called will. And because of it, we love to love certain people, and love to hate others. And as you might imagine, it is unreasonable. Sometimes we cannot explain to ourselves why we feel so viscerally hostile to someone, nor can we justify a mystifying attraction toward someone else.
Find out what's happening in Calabasaswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
These days the Jewish People are observing “The Three Weeks,” an annual period of national mourning commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem and the subsequent exiles, one of which has yet to end.
The cause for these troubles was senseless hatred. So say the great sages of the Talmud. And the singular remedy to repair the damage and restore the glory is the opposite – senseless love.
It is possible – with a healthy dose of willpower – to make a conscious decision to love the people we meet. Because though we cannot flick a switch and suddenly love, we do have the ability to choose that we would love to love – and that choice will change everything.
The love is not romantic, nor is it familial. It is a simple, serious sense of ownership and belonging: “You are what you are, but whatever you are, you are my brother. And so I love you.”
So when the question is asked of you, by you: “Who would we like to love today?” your answer should be “Everyone”.
It’s a difficult and challenging task because it can’t be an act – but no one ever said changing the world was going to be a breeze.