Alfred Dawes | It is all about love

Complete this exercise. Write down everyone alive who you love on a piece of paper. All the family and friends who bring you contentment and inner peace by just being in their company or hearing their laughter. Then close your eyes and imagine for each one that they were gone forever and there would be no visits or phone calls ever again. Feel in those moments what you would miss about them and the memories through which they would live on. Then open your eyes and know that every moment with them around from thereon is a blessing and an opportunity to enjoy their love. Treat each day as if you already lost them, because one day, your list will be shorter.

Love is the most abused and misused word. In its purest forms it is what makes us human. Love transcends time and space. It cannot be explained. It cannot be understood. All physical laws, logic and behavioural science break down at the singularity called true love. Yet it is so beautiful that it captivates us enough to dominate our songs and poetry. Religions have extolled the virtues of love, yet none have attempted to explain it. Love just is. It is a powerful and positive emotion and yet, at the same time, wielding love inappropriately can make it more dangerous than hate.

MISUSE THE WORD

We misuse the word love in so many ways. We love our jobs, types of food, a song, material things and adoration. We mistake their fleeting pleasures with true joy. Anyone who has loved can tell the peace and contentment from being close to their loved ones, or to simply see their own joy and happiness. It is that inner peace, comfort and contentment that we confuse with the short-term glow of pleasure. Loving someone gives you a joy that is not conditional. Much of our frustrations and the ills of the world reside in how we show love, or the conditionalities we attach to it.

Especially for, but not limited to parents, we tend to show our love with what we think we need to give those who we love, rather than what they truly need from us. We may offer protection to the point of suffocating them when all that they need is the opposite, freedom. Or material things when what they value most is our time. What we lacked as a child may not be what they lack, but we want to give them what we never had growing up. That may do more harm than good.

In trying to revive my first faltering orchid, I watered it more often. I needed to be satisfied that I was trying my best. The extra watering in my attempt to care for what I was trying to save eventually destroyed it. We say we love flowers and then cut and stick them in vases to enjoy them as they wilt and die. Would true love rather they grow freely in their natural habitat? The same is the love for a cage bird’s song. Our love selfishly wants to cage it close to us rather than to let it fly freely and be truly happy. Our love can destroy the object of our affections and relationships without us realising.

On a trip to Barbados, I noticed how beautifully they trimmed their hedges made from different flowers. The gardeners tended them to near perfect symmetry. Would the natural beauty be lessened if a plant was left to grow as wild as it wanted without the restrictive desires of the gardener? Sometimes it is the frustration of having those who we love not yielding to what we want from them, rather than accepting and still loving their imperfections, that breed discontent. True love should not be conditional or be dependent on the other conforming to what we need. It should respect that they have their own unique needs and still love them not because of, but in spite of who they are. Those frustrations and resentments rob us of the simple joy of loving. Whether it is family, friends or significant others.

CRIME COMMITTED BY JEALOUS LOVER

Many a crime has been committed by a jealous lover. Many have refused to walk away from a toxic relationship because they are unwilling to let the other person go, even if letting them go is best for them. Not to see if they will return, but because it will lead them to a happiness outside of that cage. True love will lead to contentment in seeing them find their happiness elsewhere.

As we spend this season with our loved ones it is the perfect time to examine our relationships and how we may be harming them with our love. Are we caging our loved ones, overwatering them by giving them what we need to give them rather than what they need, or are we pruning a wild flower without accepting its beauty in just being a flower? Are we neglecting those we truly get the contentment and joy from loving without remembering that one day they will disappear from that list and our lives forever?

This new year, let us all make a conscious effort to celebrate love for its power to achieve happiness rather than a weapon that can do harm. Now more than ever what the world needs is pure unadulterated love. Not as a conqueror of all, but as a saviour. And let it begin with you. Love you all.

- Dr Alfred Dawes is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, CEO of Windsor Wellness Centre, and medical spokesman for Lifespan Spring Water. Follow him on Twitter @dr_aldawes. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and adawes@ilapmedical.com.