What is the secret to the transformation of the planet, speaking of humanity? (not the physical environment) I will unveil it right at the beginning, so as not to leave you hanging. But this is something we all know or should know deep within.
The secret is this: if every mother would love each child they bring into the world and every father would be there to raise and love each child too, the planet would be dramatically transformed in every level of society.
So this is the ideal, the far-reaching goal, or wish. Now let's highlight the malady, why the world is not this way.
A lack of genuine love is the clear malady and sickness that creeps upon all humanity. Certainly, if we all are honest, we have to admit that we don't love enough and we sometimes outright fail at being loving.
This is the most broad and general at the beginning. Now let us get more specific.
Whether parents love their children or not when they are raising them makes such a difference in their (the childrens) lives , and these differences could be profound. These children of course grow up and most have children of their own. There have been enough cases in the news reports of crimes committed and the deepest underlying problem of the committers was that they just did not feel loved or cared for, and it was their way of lashing out at society, their family, or even themselves.
Love is an abstract concept, but care is more concrete, tangible, and manifests in what we say and do. Care and love go hand-in-hand and so we should talk about them together. A person cannot not love a person if they don't care about the person. This is a truism I am sure virtually all humans would agree with.
The mother to baby/child nurturing, from day one, is so vital to that child growing up mentally healthy. The fact is, a significant portion of human beings in the world just don't get that nurturing they need. Its that special nurturing, even the physical and gracious contact, that serves so many needs of the infant or child. If its breast feeding, its of course providing physical nutrition. But the nurturing communicates care. The nurturing also provides a sense of security, although they could be other things in the environment or other people that create an insecure home or neighborhood.
An good apple seed if planted will eventually produce an apple tree. Many things are passed down from generation to generation. If a human being was not loved or did not feel loved by their parents growing up, then very good chance, if/when they have children, they will not adequately love them either. Conversely, a human being loved and nurtured by at least one of their parents will do a better job loving and nurturing their chidren if/when they have children. Children who are not loved growing up have not learned how to love and it will be more difficult for them to receive love as an adult. They can still learn love, but their social environment and their own will and inner decisions will for a large part determine whether they learn to love or not.
Parents giving that care and love that every child deserves and a child receiving it gives power of wholeness and mental well-being to the children who in turn become adults.
But loving some infants and children is sometimes just plain difficult. The more extreme example is if a woman got pregnant from, say a rape. That would be difficult for most women to love that baby, because it a constant reminder of the pain of the rape. Some women may choose to terminate the life. And then there are cases of spousal abuse in which some of these events may produce a child that was not planned to be loved. And then there is simply the other scenerio, probably in the tens of thousands across humanity, of an unplanned baby. Simply put, they had sex because they wanted the sex, but not for purpose to have a child.
We could say that it is human to have sex. But babies are the offspring of sex, generally speaking, except usually where birth control is used. Especially in light of transforming the world with love, birth control is really simply for having the pleasure of sex without the fruit, a baby.
But the highest and transforming way for human beings to go, in my view, is the planned children with the intent to love their child or children. Think what is does to a childs esteem when their own parent or parents tell them that you were planned and we love you. Conversely, think of the negative effect it has a child's esteem and identity to learn that they were unplanned and unwanted, or that they were the result of sexual abuse or rape.
In the reality of this world, we are sometimes faced with choosing the lesser of two evils. What is the conclusion of the fact of many people on the planet who themselves seem to lack love of themselves and are not planning to give love to their babies? We are talking about thousands, tens, and hundreds of thousands of new lives come into the world through their having sex too often without birth control or failed birth control. If certain peoples do not intend to love children they bring into the world, then a logically conclusion is that they should exercise all the birth control measures as possible. The difficulty of course is how can that possibly be regulated and enforced without infringing upon human rights? It almost sounds unloving to say that they should not bring children into the world, but that is a natural conclusion if the goal is transformation of the planet for the better.
We have often heard it said that love begins with ourselves. This too is a truism. What it means is that we are in the here and now. We cannot change the past. We only have the present and a plan for the future. We must decide to love. It is a choice. If we were not cared for or loved growing up, we must work through those issues, and decide to love. We must be very careful in choosing friends and lovers who will care and love us, instead of bring us down into a lower life or into abuse. We all make mistakes in life. Let us learn from them.
I have made my share of mistakes, and I try to learn from every one. I also decide to live a higher life of love. I choose to love and care for others. We should forgive often because we fail often. We should PLAN TO LOVE.
I plan to love and I hope you plan to love too, and together, we can help make the world a better place with the ultimate goal of transformation.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
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