Love At HomeWritten by Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
It's Valentine's Day. This day focused on expressions of love can be wonderful. Unexpected flowers arrive. Gold embossed boxes of delicious chocolates are given. Cute stuffed animals proclaiming love are exchanged. Great start! A good beginning. The important question, though, is: "Do you demonstrate your love every other day?" Unless you do, Valentine's Day is just another 'Hallmark Holiday'.In U.S. and Canada, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon. I did not have to look very far or very hard, either. Maybe you've noticed it where you are. It's simple. Folks seem to treat people they interact with outside home a little better than they often treat folks they say they love most at home. Isn't this curious? People will say or do things at home that they would not do in public. They leave their manners outside their doors. They forget that 'please' and 'thank you', used freely, make life much simpler. Recently I was giving a parenting workshop at a college. There were fifteen couples in room and I asked them what they thought were greatest lessons they were teaching their children. Many good answers came forth. Then, I told them that with every look, word and action, they were teaching their children how to treat a partner. Oooh! There were some pained expressions in that room.
| | Just a Little Willingness to Love...Written by Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
What is love? A ticklish sensation around heart that can't be scratched? Something I earn when I do things right? Something I give to get something back? My definition is that love is a willingness to choose to see and respond to best in another person, even when they are not experiencing or expressing it themselves at moment. This gives you opportunity to be loving, no matter what other is doing! It also requires that you decide to give up petty (and not-so-petty) judgments of others and replace that with willingness to see them in their best light. Quite a tall order!Now, how do you recognize love in your life? Do you have a well-defined way of recognizing love coming to you? Is it "it has to look, sound, feel like this or it isn't love"? Or, are you open to seeing, hearing and feeling love in many forms? You can miss a lot of love in your life if you have a narrow, restricting perception of which form is acceptable to you. How do you express love in your life? Familiar quotes worthy of bringing into application are "Work is love made visible." "Works, not words, are proof of love." and "Service is nothing more than love in work clothes." Consider your expressions of love. Do your words match your actions? Do you say you'll do something for another but "forget" regularly? Are you willing to match your walk with your talk? It seems to me to be a waste of energy to spend much valuable time talking about what I'm going to do, or what I think I should do, when I could be using that time for doing it!
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