Finding Love

I am a firm believer in the dictum that there are certain things in our lives that we all already have, from the day we are born and we don’t need to look for it to find it since it is already there, but what we need to do is to create the right condition within ourselves for it to reveal its magic. And Love is perhaps the first such thing that we all have. Yet it is for love that so many of us crave and search and often die in despair of not having found it.

We just crossed the day when most part of the world celebrates Love; including those who are looking for it to arrive. It hasn’t gone anywhere so it will never arrive if that is what you are waiting for. So in today’s post I will write briefly about one of the main reasons why many of us are unable to create the right condition within ourselves and hence do not realize that love is staring right at our face each time we look into the mirror.

And that reason is ANGER.

Anger has countless manifestations and reasons for it to arise; though fundamentally it arises out of fear. We get angry when we are scared and anger is our defence mechanism built inside our genes. Anger is so all-pervading and all-influencing that it obliterates and clouds every other emotion within us when it grips us like a mad frenzy destroying everything we have including the ones we love and the ones who love us. We all get angry since it is human to feel this emotion, I cannot ask you to renounce anger or to purge it out of you, since that is humanly impossible. But I can share with you a tool that I use when I feel anger rising within me. And this has two facets.

Facet 1, when the anger is within us (no matter why) – don’t say or act, don’t do anything. This is the only moment in life when I would advice inaction. Just go away putting a physical distance between you and the cause of your anger if possible. Else just do nothing. Let the emotion pass through and over and beyond you. It’s like being caught into a raging blizzard (as it often happens to me in the mountains) and all you can do is to find a safe haven and wait it out, let it pass before you move again. So ideally be silent, do nothing and allow your anger to exhaust its own destructive energy, like a fire that extinguishes once it has eaten up what it has been burning. But if you do something, then let there be no action and only words. Ideally say those words within yourself or to nature and not to another human. And if you say the words out loud then remember those words and promise yourself never to repeat those words again. But if there is action then let that be a pantomime, if you feel like hitting someone, hit the air, if you feel like throwing something, throw the air (grab a large bucket of air), if you feel like hurting someone, hurt the air. And if you end up doing the worst that is take action against a real person then immediately apologize and hug that person and acknowledge to that person what you were scared of and make it up with an act of kindness or love (for both are same). Never leave your anger pent up, let it go.  

Facet 2, when the anger is within someone else (no matter why) – again the best action is inaction, simply do and say nothing. Let that person vent anger by whatever means; and if something is being thrown at you try to catch it or avoid being hit somehow and at times you can allow it to hit you as well since it’s not bad to be hit by someone’s fear. Do absolutely nothing to fuel that anger, do not incite, excite or instigate it further. Stand your ground and do not abandon that person, neither be judgmental, nor illogically sweet or condescending or patronizing. Do not think that the person is weak and cannot deal with anger. Let that person be and if that person wants you to leave, then just leave. Allow the anger to evaporate and then take action. Embrace, empathize and listen. So when someone says something vitriolic to you in anger, do not remember it and not hold it against that person. If this person loved you or loves you truly then he or she will come back to you as soon as the anger is gone and is replaced with remorse. And if they never loved you then how the hell does it matter to you if that person is angry or not, so go away and do your thing without bothering. But never reciprocate anger with anger.

We must understand that most of the ‘anger’ is the reverse of love, since we can truly get angry with something that we truly love and care about and are scared to lose or scared that the object of our love will come to some harm and there’s not much we can do about it (since such is life) and our helplessness causes our anger and then we end up directing that anger at the loved one. A common sentence we all have used – I am so angry with him/her, he/she doesn’t understand that I want the best for him/her.

We all are born with love as the basic ingredient to life, like blood flowing through our veins. Anger is generated and manifested out of that love. Love is the building block; anger is the monument we end up creating. But the choice is so easy to make. With blocks of love why not create monuments to love. And even if in that monument we do end up creating a couple of rooms of anger, we can always open the windows to those rooms and let the anger fly away since anger is nothing but hot emotions like hot air and they are lighter so they will fly away if you keep the windows open. And when something goes out, as we all know, something else rushes in to take its place since nature abhors vacuum. Each time your anger leaves you, what is the first emotion that fills the space within your heart? Remorse, gratitude or love!

Remember, it is human to be angry so I do not preach non-anger, but allow the anger to go away and then love, which is within you, will flow and engulf you of its own accord. Embrace it back and be the love that you have been looking for.