Love Letter

Dear Friends,
I'm moved to write this letter because I believe there are some things you need to know, maybe nobody has ever told you or maybe they did and you need confirmation from another source. Sometimes when people speak to each other they do not always hear what the other is saying. A letter is something that could be read over and over, taken in piece by piece. Seeing the words come off the page may help you understand more than if you were to hear the words come from some one's mouth. You can read in private so your reactions can be genuine and not masked for those who may be around you. If you want to laugh, laugh, if you want to cry cry. There's no one but you and the words.
My friend I feel compelled to share my observations and provide feedback. As a teacher, providing feedback is something we are suppose to do, students look for feedback. They want to know how to be better and feedback is crucial to that process. Feedback is provided based on the assignment not the person who did the assignment, therefore making it unbiased feedback. Just like the feedback I will provide in this letter is based on actions, not the person. Therefore if the actions apply to you, then the feedback may be helpful in your self growth, if the actions do not apply to you, then take the information for future reference or pass on to others who may be in need of it. This not a form of judgement, it not my place to judge. My role is simply to tell you what I see. Sometimes we don't realize that people see things in us and just don't say anything. So we go on living our lives thinking that it's fine and our mask is working.

I have noticed your smile. It is not as bright as it once was. The glimmer in the eye that used to accompany the smile is missing. The smile seems forced and unnatural and I can't help but wonder why. My immediate response is how do we get the loving, genuine, bright smile back? Can I help? Is life beating you down? Is life sucking the LIFE out of you? I see you moving through the motions. You go to work, you may go to the gym, you go out with friends, you hang out with family, but the joy in doing those things is missing. When you get home behind closed doors, your smile is gone. What happened? You are merely a shell of yourself. I see you. I hurt for you.

I notice your expectations on people to make you happy. Your expectations for material things to make you happy. Yet, you have many people in your life and many beautiful things but you are still not happy. The constant need to accumulate "friends" and/or material things in hopes of making your life mean something. You have a "good" job making a lot of money. You have a beautiful house. However those people and things have not lived up to the expectation of making you feel satisfied. Behind the smile is emptiness. I know you hoped no one could see.

For you things are just not working out like you planned. People are not coming through like they said. You keep finding yourself in situations and circumstances that require you to be constantly thinking about ways to get out of them. No time to enjoy life. The money is not right, the bills are piling up. Everyone else seems to be doing better. Everyone else seems to be happy. For some reason, these things don't happen to them. You are just tired, tired of the hamster wheel you have been on for the past few months/years. Always in a jam needing someone to help out. If only this didn't happen or that didn't happen or the money was flowing, life would not be so hard.

My message to all of you is that, there is no "happily ever after." We go through life looking for stuff to make us happy. If only we had this or that. There are a million "if only's." We each have separate lives. We all come from different backgrounds with different resources. Now we just have to use those resources to our benefit. However those first thing we need to do is STOP. Take a moment to sit back and assess our situation. When we have so much going on, it's a good idea to push pause. Get away from people and situations. Turn the phone off. Get some alone time to think. Look at where you were a year ago or two years ago. Are you better off or worse? What are some decisions you've made that contributed to you being where you are today? What were the motives of those decisions? Be honest with yourself. This is alone time with yourself so no excuses are necessary. If you made good decisions that had good motives, be proud of yourself. If you made some bad decisions based on some bad motives then you need to acknowledge that and not do that again. The only good motive is love. When we make decisions coming from a place of love, the outcome will always be good. When I say love, I mean love of your children, love of yourself, love of others absence of ego, pride, money, convenience, appearance, etc. Pure love. Corinthians 13 is a very popular scripture and it is about love.

Love is long suffering,
love is kind,
it is not jealous,
love does not boast,
it is not inflated.
It is not discourteous,
it is not selfish,
it is not irritable,
it does not enumerate the evil.
It does not rejoice over the wrong, but rejoices in the truth 
 
It covers all things,
it has faith for all things,
it hopes in all things,
it endures in all things.
Love never fails

When we think about love, we think about romantic love. We must think about love in the purest sense. This is the love that conquers all, not the chick flick romantic love we immediately think of. When we make decisions from a place of love, we can use Corinthians 13 as a checklist. Go through and read it again. Then look back at the decisions you've made in life and see if Love was your motive. The goal is not to look back and regret. The goal is to learn from our past so that we can be better now and in the future. We want to live happy fulfilling lives. The only way to do that is to start with love. In the beginning you will have to force yourself to think differently, after a while it will come naturally, that is the way we change our bad habits to good ones. I share this information because I love you as friends and I will also use this information for my own personal life because I love myself. We deserve more than what we have right now and what we have been accepting. Love yourself enough to be honest about who you are and what you want out of life. Love others enough to show your true self. Love yourself enough to seek balance in your life. Balance consist of an almost equal amount of time spent with family life, career life, spiritual life, exercise, social life, etc and when you have these things in your life balanced AND you begin to make decisions from a place of love. Watch how things will change for you. It is when we weigh heavy on the career side or social side or the family side, and we ignore those other parts of our lives that need attention, we begin to feel overwhelmed or even stuck. Look at your life, is it balanced? If not take some time to realign it the way that it should be. Pull back on those things taking most of your energy and attention and add to those things that need your attention. Remember if you feed it, it will grow. You want to feed all of it. First you must start with love.

Love,
Me :)