The Bigger Picture:The greatest power on earth is love. If you think its money, military or nuclear energy, you're missing something important, writes Shalini Sinha
You can destroy someone or something in a moment with a severe act of violence. But to reach out and touch another's heart, despite your own personal struggle, painful events or simply the distance that is created by diverse experience - to have intentions for understanding, compassion and tenderness, despite it all - takes real courage.
I have previously been called naive for asserting that the true focus of the human agenda must be love. I don't think there's anything naive about it. Rather, to be able to stand up against the hopelessness of our world's most dire problems and insist not only that it is necessary to include the humanity of each party when conceiving of solutions but also that we must implement those ideas, is nothing less than highly developed.
It is actually easier to bomb, knife, shout, hit, reject, degrade, dismiss and kill than it is to listen and aim to really care.
That is, it is easier to act out our feelings on others, and blame their struggles and behaviours for our responses, than to take responsibility for our own shortcomings, face and heal our own hurts, and believe in each other.
To be more loving, we need to face our hurts. It is internalised feelings of anger, hopelessness, powerlessness and defensiveness that cause us to be somewhat blinded in our view. When this happens, because we can't fully see all aspects of a situation, we inevitably behave in ways that can be thoughtless and ultimately hurtful. Because we might feel "justified" - in that we were only trying to "protect" or "stand up for ourselves" - we don't acknowledge how our behaviour did not reflect the best possible solution, but was guided by hurt.
It also actually hurts us when we are not allowed to share our love. It leaves us feeling cut-off, lonely, and (oddly) raises questions for us about our own lovability. Yet, the expression of love in today's society has been made very limited. For no reason except for human distress, we now consider it normal not to want to love every person we might meet or learn about in the world. More sinister is that some of us, through fear, are actually being taught to be hateful.
Making love so "precious" that it is not spread widely, lessens its meaning and power. Doing so withholds love from the world, creates distance inside us and fosters isolation in our minds. This not only misrepresents the potential of the world we live in, but breeds cynicism and hopelessness.
Our strict association between affection and sex makes it difficult for us to connect in ordinary encounters. It's no longer normal for us - as human beings - to be affectionate with each other in mundane interactions. Thus, truly simple connections between humanity, such as a gentle touch or the holding of a hand, can be confusing, challenging to one's "privacy" or seen as too "invasive".
Wouldn't it be a much nicer world if, with clarity and simplicity, we could show love towards each other? More importantly, we would have a better functioning world. People would actually think better. Our basic connections would be deeper.
Our mental health would improve because we would have access to the resources that actually help process and release pain. We would create better structures for supporting one another because we would more clearly understand their benefit. Ultimately, we would prioritise directions that nurtured humanity rather than strained and destroyed it.
Instead, most of us currently show our children less affection each year as they grow (under the guise that it's "inappropriate") and teach them to limit their affections with each other. In so doing, we disconnect them.
As Valentine's Day approaches, we have the opportunity to mobilise this day as a celebration of humanity's potential for love. We can make it a day for lovers and also communities, families and children. In this way, I would love to see people extend themselves to show some love and affection to those who are close to them, who are around them, and who they meet. A smile, a gentle touch, an unexpected gift or five minutes to listen, all spread our love.
I wouldn't want anyone to end up feeling lonely, unloved or disconnected. We fail as a community when this happens. When we can only celebrate the love between lovers, we create a context where many are rejected.
Let's face it, the couple relationship, while intensive and central to us when we have it, is not with us at every step of our lives.
Love, in its broader sense, usually is, however, even when we are struggling to see it there for us. It is a vision which reaches out and celebrates love as it occurs at all levels and in all ways is both inspiring and profound.
Shalini Sinha is a life coach and practises the Bowen technique in Dublin and Wexford