Living for the sake of others

LIVING FOR THE SAKE OF OTHERS

 *True love is living for the sake of others without expecting any thing in return.* 

True love is unselfish love. It is always for the sake of the other person. True love may be unconditional or conditional. A friend’s conditional love may be true love: “I won’t hang around with you anymore unless you stop doing drugs. I care about you too much to watch you destroy yourself. You’re going to have make a choice drugs or me.” This love is for the benefit of the other person and is given out of concern for him or her.

Everyone wants to love and be loved. In one way or another, love occupies the minds of all of us on a daily basis. It is perhaps the most written about topic of poetry, song and story. Why do we care so much about  love? Love is something that has the potential to bring us great satisfaction and real happiness. We all dream of a love that will fill our lives with joy and last forever. Is there anyone who, deep down, would not want that kind of love?

At the same time, love seems to be extremely unpredictable and mysterious. Most of the stories and songs about love do not speak about the joys of love. There are many songs and poems about lost love, unfaithful love, the search for love, and falling in and out of love. This means that love is not always so easy to understand or to keep.

 What is love, anyway? Many people are very confused by love. They wonder: is love something you can deliberately find, or do you have to wait for it to come to you? Are some people destined to find love and others not? How can you know when you’ve found it? Is there such a thing as true love? 

Let’s look at love. One of the first things we notice is that love requires a relationship between two or more people in order to exist. It requires an “other” besides the self. Therefore, there is something about love that requires unselfishness: love always involves someone other than ourselves. 

When one person gives love to another, creating a desire within the other person to return that love, a circuit is created, like electricity. This may create a bond that neither side wants to break. Eventually, the bond created between the two may become so strong that no force in the universe could break it. In this case the two partners become as one being. They can’t imagine anything else but to be together in love. Why does a circuit of love, once begun, sometimes get broken? Selfishness creeps into love relationships when instead they are meant to be focused upon the other person. That is how the circuit and the heart gets broken.

The highest and most mature form of love is selfless. It is love that gives without expecting anything in return. It doesn’t change just because it doesn’t get something back right away. Of course, everyone desire to be at the receiving end of love , but a mature person focuses more on giving love than receiving it. Such love is unconditional. Human beings long for unconditional love. When we experience unconditional love, it gives us a deep sense of peace, security, value, and well-being. This kind of love says that we are loved for who we are without having to do anything for it. We are loved not because we meet certain conditions, but simply because we have value as human beings.

In an atmosphere of unconditional love, we can feel free to let our unique potential blossom without fear of losing the love that means so much to us. Unconditional love makes it possible for us to believe in ourselves, to feel we are valuable and good. Although it affirms us we are, unconditional love also inspires us to do and be more.  

Unconditional love can commonly be seen in parental love. Truly loving parents do not stop to calculate how much they have given their children and decide that it is enough. They love their child simply because he or she is their child, and they want to give him or her everything they can so the child can have a good life. This kind of love knows no limits the parents will work day and night for the benefit of their child.

 .