Try to love people - every day

One of my LinkedIn friends asked what I thought was a very profound question the other day. What are you doing that nobody else is doing?

This was a marketing question - he said "In order to set yourself apart, you have to be memorable and remarkable. What do you do on a daily basis that truly makes you stand out?" 

He then added the hashtags - #fulfillment #meaning #purpose #journeytocloudnine #happiness
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6631509485858889728/

I didn't hesitate to answer: I teach people how to make bullying and harassment stop using science and compassion. And I love this question.  The thing I try to do every day - is love. Myself, my family and my friends and the people I come in contact with.  I try to make people feel loved.  My grandma told me when I was young - that I was put on this earth to love people - and that is what I've tried to do ever since.

And then I realized - all this time I've been burying my lede.  I have been telling people what I can do for them - but not WHY I teach what I teach.

Everything I do and teach is grounded in love and is done out of love and is about promoting love.

• Stopping bullying, it is about love. 
• Humanistic management? It’s about love.  
• Teaching people humanistic philosophy – it’s about love. 

Everything – is about love. It’s my core motivation for everything.

I feel like I’ve had an epiphany. So watch my website - I am literally going to go through all my marketing materials – and make the concept of love – front and center. 

https://humanistlearning.com/

Love Yourself and Love Others

What is the thing that makes you unique? Me? My grandmother told me I was put on this earth to love people. And that's what I've been doing every since.  Every day - I try to love myself. Love my family. Love others. That's what my business is about too. Teaching people how to deal with difficult situations with love in their heart. Learn more at https://humanistlearning.com

THIS is what being a Humanist means to me. It means  - practicing love. 

The importance of joy and being fully fallably human in social justice work

It's all about balance!

If you can't give yourself permission to be human, and you can't extend that to other people, it's a good time to check in with yourself.

Sam Dylon Finch wrote a lovely twitter thread about his experience in social justice. He's been both an angry social justice warrior and a loving one.  More recently loving.  He talks about what changed here in this thread.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1174106626585874433.html?fbclid=IwAR3JnWadCJOgAPKFE0xjoOM8_C6qekc3qHMExhUHz_m0TIVhN2A4nq5had8

My favorite part is this:

Because dignity and care and kindness have to come from a genuinely loving place. And if you become too absorbed in righteousness & despair, and you don't balance it with the healing work that allows you to love on your people and see THAT as truly radical... you lose yourself.

— Sam Dylan Finch 🍓 (@samdylanfinch) September 18, 2019

Loving people is truly radical. It's ok to be mad, but it's also important to love.  Love is what helps us fight compassion fatigue.

Great writers and thinkers have been telling us how to do this for a long time. In his essay Return to Tipasa, Albert Camus says the same thing. He had found that love itself was drying up in his fight against the Nazis - and then - he returns to Tipasa (a place he had played in his youth).  He says,

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
― Albert Camus

So - in this never ending fight for justice always remember that what call us to fight - is love. And to paraphrase Camus again from his letter to a German friend - it is important - that as we fight for our truth (LOVE) that we take care not to destroy it with the very arms we use to defend it. 

Different Kinds of Love

We feel and experience love in different ways. Some love is passionate, some is compassionate. Learning how to find balance between compassion and passion is key to successful relationships.

My grandmother on my dad’s side told me when I was young, that I was put on this earth to love other people.  When I think back on it, this one thing she said has had a profound impact on my life and how I choose to live it and who I am as a person. I am here to love other people. That is my purpose.

How I choose to manifest that love depends on the situation. I love a lot of people: my husband and son, my extended family on both sides, my friends and acquaintances.  And more abstractly I love the other 7 billion people that make up my human family.  Oh – and I love my pets too.

I talk a lot about compassion as it relates to my practice as a Humanist. To me, compassion is an expression of my love for others. As a Humanist, I experience compassionate love as Promethean – meaning it is aimed at alleviating the suffering of others.  It is why I work so hard to make the world a better place.

But my compassionate love is also more immediate. It’s not just an abstract Promethean urge. It’s also about how I feel about people when I meet them and interact with them. It’s protective and caring.

But my love can also be passionate. Specifically, the sexual yearning I have for my husband or the intense protectiveness I sometimes feel for my son.  My life, every day is so filled with love that I rarely experience depression or aloneness.

When I talk to others about this, I get the impression that the only love they are willing or want to experience is passionate love. When I suggest compassionate love, I meet resistance. Compassion is about helping others. What’s in it for me?

What’s in it is the feeling of love. Compassion has passion at it’s root.  It’s an intense feeling and it by and large feels really good to care about other people.  Compassion is intense. Just intense directed towards others instead of directed toward myself.  Passionate love is possessive. Compassionate love is altruistic.

And that is the key. We all need meaning and purpose in our life. Without it we are stressed and unhappy. What better meaning can you give your life than to live a life of love.

If you are worried that all this love for others will drain you don’t be. I was once asked if I would rather be in love or be loved. My answer was that I would rather be in love. Being in love feels great. Being loved doesn’t feel like much of anything. And if you don’t reciprocate it, having someone love you can be really annoying and frustrating and you feel bad for them. So I will always choose to be in love over being loved.  Perhaps that’s why I’m so happy.

If you need help learning how to be compassionate without being taken advantage of – consider taking this free ecourse from Dr. Marcia Sirota – Ruthless Compassion - https://humanistlearning.com/ruthless-compassion/