Maybe love is the wrong word then because oxytocin is defined as a love/hate drug. You cannot love without hate. That is how the human mind gets into conquest debates in the first place. Overriding th...
I once worked at a learning center. I'd only been working there for no more than a month or two when I attended my first "new parent orientation seminar".
The "math lead" who had been working at that learning center prior to my arrival there was a very bright high school student who was about to go off to college.
In that seminar, the director of the learning center told the group of parents that she loved that math lead who was heading off to college and that she loved me too.
This kind of blew my mind because I'd only known her for no more than a month or two, as I said above. My concept of love was different from hers and that was something I needed to wrestle with.
Now I see the service of holding a door open for someone as an act of love. I see the choice to take the earbuds out of my ears when I'm checking out at the grocery store so I can converse with the cashier and make the cashier feel seen and heard to be an act of love.
There is always love to be found in each moment and we can always find a reason to express love for each person. It might be the only reason we can think of to express love for that person, but at least it's non-zero.
I don't consider it to be a loving act or a loving disposition to ignore or dismiss someone when they wish to share something they've found to be significant with me. Likewise, I don't consider it to be intelligent to dismiss someone at the first sign of disagreement. If I acted in that way, I wouldn't have learned about the subject of jinn/djinn when discussing reincarnation with devout Muslim Bitcoiner Ray Youssef on X a few years ago. I'd never heard of jinn/djinn before that conversation. That conversation would not have taken place if I had not asked Ray how he explains the evidence collected by people like Dr. Ian Stevenson MD, Dr. Jim Tucker MD, Dolores Cannon, etc. I knew, going into that discussion, that Ray and I didn't see eye to eye on the big picture, but that didn't stop me from probing his perspective to see what interesting insights might emerge.
That's emptying your cup. That's choosing the road less travelled. That's taking the saddle bags off of your camel so you can enter the narrow passage known as the eye of the needle. If you're unwilling to take the saddle bags off, the camel isn't fitting inside. If you are willing to take the saddle bags off, they're probably going to get stolen so, to enter the city and see what it has to offer, you must pay a cost and eat a loss. Eating that loss doesn't mean you will get no gains though, and you'll never know what kind of gains you could have gained if you don't shoot your shot. As Gretzky said, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
The "math lead" who had been working at that learning center prior to my arrival there was a very bright high school student who was about to go off to college.
In that seminar, the director of the learning center told the group of parents that she loved that math lead who was heading off to college and that she loved me too.
This kind of blew my mind because I'd only known her for no more than a month or two, as I said above. My concept of love was different from hers and that was something I needed to wrestle with.
Now I see the service of holding a door open for someone as an act of love. I see the choice to take the earbuds out of my ears when I'm checking out at the grocery store so I can converse with the cashier and make the cashier feel seen and heard to be an act of love.
There is always love to be found in each moment and we can always find a reason to express love for each person. It might be the only reason we can think of to express love for that person, but at least it's non-zero.
I don't consider it to be a loving act or a loving disposition to ignore or dismiss someone when they wish to share something they've found to be significant with me. Likewise, I don't consider it to be intelligent to dismiss someone at the first sign of disagreement. If I acted in that way, I wouldn't have learned about the subject of jinn/djinn when discussing reincarnation with devout Muslim Bitcoiner Ray Youssef on X a few years ago. I'd never heard of jinn/djinn before that conversation. That conversation would not have taken place if I had not asked Ray how he explains the evidence collected by people like Dr. Ian Stevenson MD, Dr. Jim Tucker MD, Dolores Cannon, etc. I knew, going into that discussion, that Ray and I didn't see eye to eye on the big picture, but that didn't stop me from probing his perspective to see what interesting insights might emerge.
That's emptying your cup. That's choosing the road less travelled. That's taking the saddle bags off of your camel so you can enter the narrow passage known as the eye of the needle. If you're unwilling to take the saddle bags off, the camel isn't fitting inside. If you are willing to take the saddle bags off, they're probably going to get stolen so, to enter the city and see what it has to offer, you must pay a cost and eat a loss. Eating that loss doesn't mean you will get no gains though, and you'll never know what kind of gains you could have gained if you don't shoot your shot. As Gretzky said, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.