Unconditional Love

All of us, men, women and children, have a  deep need to be loved, understood and have someone who will go the distance for us and put themselves on the line for us.

When it comes to our relationships, we have to ask ourselves: “How far would I actually go to help someone who I say I love, and to be with the person in her trials and tribulations? Can I give her my all, 100%? Do I really have that love in me?”

The answer is, yes, you do! But most of us really don’t know that it’s there. If we haven’t pushed ourselves, or demanded it from ourselves, or unleashed it, then we haven’t yet accessed that real, deep, love that we actually feel towards our spouses and kids, and also towards ourselves. That love is so very powerful. But most of us haven’t (yet…) got anywhere near harnessing it.

So instead, we get caught up in our heads, trying to work out “strategies” about “what to do” about specific people, situations or problems. We forget that we love these people, and that our love for them is so powerful, it can push through anything. But before we can harness our love, we first have to be connected to it. Only once we connect to it, can we share it with our spouses, kids, colleagues, friends, neighbors, ourselves, and also G-d.

Love is the power that will bring the Messiah. Love is G-d Himself. Love is G-d’s greatest character trait. G-d loves everyone and everything He created, and His love is perfect and unlimited.

Of course, we’re not G-d! We are human and limited, and our love has flaws and limitations and biases. But we can still aspire to emulate G-d to the best of our abilities. In fact, trying to perfect our character and to emulate G-d is the main purpose of our lives! We have to strive to live by the spiritual values that will prepare us and groom us to be able to make the right choices in our relationships with others.

Say that you have a teenage son who is going through a stage of being very selfish and self-centered. Say you’re in the middle of making a wedding and you have a million and one things to do to get ready. What’s more, your spouse is out of the country, and you’ve got all the responsibility of looking after the kids, on top of everything else you are trying to get done.

Now this son, who never even lifts his finger to help you with anything, or even to just pick up after himself, comes to you, and tells you that he  wants some new clothes and he want to borrow some money and to go out with his friends in your car… Your blood starts to boil, and you start thinking to yourself: “I’ve gotta teach this kid a lesson! I have to make him into a mensch! I have a parental responsibility to point a few things out to him right now…”

But let’s press “pause” for a moment, and analyze what’s really going on, here. Really, you’re just stressed out because you’re making a wedding and your spouse is away, so you’re looking for some justification for letting this kid have it. So while you’ve pressed “pause” on the self-righteous rage attack for a moment, let’s take the opportunity to think about what G-d really wants you to be working on right now.

G-d is giving you an opportunity to show Him that you’re serious about working on your ability to love your son unconditionally by setting up the perfect situation for you to “give” at precisely the moment that you’d actually like to strangle your selfish son.

Sometimes, G-d wants us to go the extra mile in a different way. Let’s say, you are married to a person who has a kid from another marriage, and you don’t have such a great relationship with that kid. Maybe you find that young person very disrespectful or whiney; or maybe you’re a little bit jealous of the attention she is taking away from you. But your spouse is very close to his daughter and loves her very much. You haven’t  “done” anything bad, per se, by acting a bit cold towards your step-daughter, but your spouse needs you to step up to the challenge, and to try to get close to get much closer to that girl. In this situation, you can’t say that you unconditionally love your spouse, unless you’re also really trying to love your stepchild.

Every single one of us has to have the feeling that we matter, that we are significant and that we’re special and unique. All of us are one-of-a-kind limited editions, as we can easily see from the fact that no two people’s fingerprints are alike. If the person who is currently making your life miserable didn’t get that feeling of being significant, and of mattering, from loving, affirming parents, who knew how to give over that feeling, and who weren’t clobbered themselves when they were children, then they need it from you. Once we discover that we can give far more than we ever believed that we could and we unleash our power to love without conditions, we can usually turn around very painful situations and relationships in a very short time.