On Love and Like......

Love, like energy, as both science and spirituality attest, and perhaps it is because they are one and the same, can never be destroyed, only transformed.

When a relationship is founded on and in love, then that love can never be removed. It remains a constant even as you change and people change and circumstances change - love will always be there. Love has no limits.

Distance, whether literal or emotional or psychological may make us question if Love is there but Love is beyond any kind of distance and it will always be there, if you look. There are no limits to love. We can love one person or a hundred. We may love some more deeply than others but that is just the way we are made and the way this world works. What is true is that we can love dozens of people deeply and when we do, we take nothing away from the rest. There is always more and more and more Love if we want it or need it.

It is as I explained to grand-children when a new sibling was on the way - you never run out of love. You have one child and you love that child to the very depths and breadth of love and then you have another child and you love that child in the same way and it takes nothing from the first child because love has no limits - you just draw upon the eternal reservoir for every new child, every new grandchild, every new friend and every new family member or significant other who comes into your life.

There are degrees of love certainly, when it comes to friends and family because such relationships are sourced in Like as well as Love and there has to be enough mutual Like for Love to find a place. Sometimes the Like is not there and so one settles for grace and courtesy as the basis of the relationship and that is also a form of Love.

But when it comes to your children and your grandchildren there is only ever Love and who cannot Like a child? Children were made to be loved and liked and the tragedy of life is that so many are not.

I remember thinking when I first had children that parents always love their children but what is more important is liking our children and that does not always happen and sometimes must be practised. For a child needs to feel Liked as much, if not more, than it needs to feel Loved. I say that as a child who always felt Loved and rarely felt Liked.

When it comes to adults we cannot manufacture Like if there is not a rapport, we can only practise kindness and consideration. But every child deserves and needs to be liked and it does not take much practice, should it be required, to shower them with Like as well as Love.

If we had more children who felt Liked we would have more adults capable of more Love, and more people who lived life with greater fulfillment and contentment. It is never too late to practise Liking ourselves and Liking others and that is where the small, quiet steps toward Love will take place.