I can proudly stand up and say that I can manage on my own. But when the going gets tough, we all need support, or at least the feeling that we have it somewhere. Reading the news on the morning of the opening day of today’s war, I felt a crying sense of loneliness that I hadn’t felt for a long time, a confusion between a sense of loneliness for myself and compassion for the loneliness of people whose loneliness has made them hate other people. Verbally, physically, to the point of death. Be it in a military conflict or in our daily domestic political life at the level of states, organisations, families.
It is incredible that one person can make the well-being of millions of people fear-centred, but it also means that one individual has the capacity to make the well-being of millions of people beautiful – love-centred. But only if the person is not broken. Broken people often feel better when others are broken too. Because working with myself seems too painful and it’s easier to feel better when I feel that someone else is doing even worse. These people need compassion, not anger.
Everyone’s better and everyone’s worse is relative and depends on the amount of pain the viewer feels inside. In the ability and inability to forgive. We can always get on with our lives and say “I don’t need anyone around me!” because we are born alone and we die alone. But we can only be ourselves with others, and become ourselves by holding others around us and with the support of others. Military conflict is a mixture of very opposite emotions – freedom and subjugation at the same time. Both sides see that they stand for freedom, but there is no freedom without love and there is no love without freedom.
Standing up for ourselves alone, we kill. We kill others emotionally or physically, but above all we destroy ourselves. But together with others, we can create something new. The new only comes into being when two opposites create together – in freedom in relation to each other, accepting their own and each other’s limits.
Relations between countries are a reflection of the relationships in our everyday lives. We attack because we ourselves are in so much pain that only the pain of another makes us feel better. When we give and accept freedom, we love. When we love, we give freedom. As we know, out of love something new is born. Perhaps without freedom nothing is born, but only … dies. Relationships, countries, communities in a broad sense.
But love doesn’t just happen, it’s not a fairy-tale love and passion for ever. Love is built and must be invested in. Consciously, compassionately, accepting limits and creating new ones. Problems between people arise when we don’t listen to each other and we don’t accept each other as we are at the moment. We talk about each other, but we don’t talk to each other or understand each other. The longer it goes on, the deeper the pain and the more evil it will cause when its protection rears its head.
No human being is born to do evil. If you have someone in your life you can lean on when you’re struggling, hold on to them. A partner, a family, a leader, even a dog. Because when you don’t have him (anymore), it’s excruciatingly painful at a difficult moment. Hold him, giving him the freedom to give it to you. Only then will we be able to prevent fights at home, at work, in the country, between countries.
Without freedom there is no love, without love there is no freedom. Then you can stand proud with your arms crossed and be proud of yourself, but also enjoy being with others and be grateful to those who have chosen to be in your life with you now, whatever the format of the relationship.
