I am sure that most of you can finish the famous line of Johnny Lee’s 1980’s Country Music hit. Because, we’ve all done it. We’ve all looked for love in all the wrong places.
So where is the right place?
We can refer to another famous song by the great Whitney Houston, The Greatest Love of all, to remind ourselves that the most important relationship we’ll ever have is with ourselves. True. But, depending on so many factors, many of them beyond our control, we often have a hard time accessing that greatest love of all.
Rumi reminds us that rather than seeking for love you should find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. Meaning, we have the love already within us. In fact, we are love. But for many of us, that concept remains cerebral. It sounds nice, feels good from time to time, but when we are having our dark night of the soul moments, we are not feeling it.
What do we do?!
Actually, the answer is simple. Love. What??? Practice loving yourself. Especially when it’s a dark night of the soul moment or month or year. Have compassion for your pain. Make the intention to love yourself, to feel peace. And be your best friend. Be the loving voice that embraces you.
Think about it…do we only love our friends when they are happy and upbeat and nice to us? Hardly! We can be so kind and compassionate. To other people!
Life is wonderful. And sometimes it’s really hard. And really hard means we are bumping up against parts of ourselves that are resisting whatever is happening. And sometimes it is really really painful. In these times we need to be loving. Patient. And kind. Gary Zukav says that this is a journey without distance, because we are traveling the path to our heart, right here, right now. And the only place to go is in the loving embrace of our own arms.
So let’s start looking for love where we know we can find it…
Note: The photo is courtesy of my amazing hiker, photographer mom.
Tara Zafft, Ph.D. 