When you genuinely love you are extending yourself, and when you are extending yourself you are growing. The more you love, the longer you love, the larger you become.
Ever heard of the golden thread principle? A principle that speaks about how things are connected, all things by a single thread. When it comes to love, marriage and child-raising, do you see such a thread? Is there just one line or are there several lines?
Of the three concepts, one thing is particularly obvious- that they are forms of relationship. They may be of varying degrees and subject to different rules of engagement. This suggests that the concepts, love, marriage and child-raising actually consist of lines, but knowing where the lines are drawn might present a remarkable challenge.
Of Love: John Denver sings:
“Love is everywhere, I see it.
You are all that you can be, go on and be it.
Life is perfect, I believe it.
Come and play the game with me.”
Call it what you will, genuine love with all the discipline that it requires, is the only path in this life to substantial joy. Take another path and you may find rare moments of ecstatic joy, but they will be fleeting and progressively more elusive. When you genuinely love you are extending yourself, and when you are extending yourself you are growing. The more you love, the longer you love, the larger you become.
Of Marriage: “If only it were possible to love without injury; fidelity isn’t enough. The hurt is in the act of possession. We are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride, or to be possessed without humiliation.” – Graham Greene’s ‘The Quiet American’
A major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved. The genuine lover always perceives the beloved as someone who has a totally separate identity. Moreover, the genuine lover always respects and even encourages this separateness and the unique individuality of the beloved. Failure to perceive and respect this separateness is extremely common, however, and the cause of much unnecessary suffering.
Of Child-raising: The difficulty that humans so generally seem to have in fully appreciating the separateness of those they are close to interferes not only with their marriage, but often with their parenting. Parents often fail to appreciate the unique individuality of their children, and instead regard their children as extensions of themselves. It is on this note that Kahil Gibran perhaps wrote these words:
“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; for even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves the bow that is stable.
Of love, marriage, and child-raising, the single thread that runs through is genuine love and genuine love is self-replenishing. And as you grow through love, so grows your joy, ever more present, ever more constant.
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Kingsley Iweka is a Freelance Writer/PR & Media Consultant. He is the Editor of www.africa-ontherise.com. Follow him on Twitter @IwekaKingsley
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.
