feeling loved

An hour of my day yesterday has inspired and led me to a few aha moments. I had the opportunity to spend an hour learning more about listening. Zalika Gardner, from Portland recently gave a talk at TEDxPortland. There are a few ideas that continue to cycle through my head since yesterday from her talk:

1. A baby cries because they want attention. Our social norm is that we do not continue to express those cries as we grow up, but the desire to want attention does not go away just because we get older.

2. How we listen to someone else shows them whether we think they matter or not.

3. Not feeling heard = not feeling loved. Feeling heard = feeling loved.

One of my biggest pet peeves is not feeling heard. Chris knows how much it matters to me. My not so nice side comes out when I do not feel heard. When I do not feel heard it is like opening a box of memories of all the times growing up when my father would tell me that children should be seen and not heard. Today I have two reactions to not feeling heard. I grow quiet, or I lash out. It really depends on who makes me feel that way. Usually if it is someone I am very close to (my sister or Chris) I lash out. I feel comfortable being my true self. When it is someone who is not as close to me, I grow quiet. I wonder if feeling safe and feeling heard equate to how someone reacts.

Her talk also made me think about how much we are consumed with our smartphones. How often they distract us. That text message that popped up on your phone may just be more important and more urgent than the person sitting right in front of you. I know I can do better to make sure I am completely focused on the individual who has my time and attention. I can listen more, I can focus more. While it definitely takes more of my time and energy, it is worth it to me to give others what I so strongly want for myself. Hopefully it means more of us (adults and children) feel more valued, heard, and loved.

Please watch the entire twenty minutes. I promise it is worth your time.

A colleague of mine always says: “You have two ears and one mouth. Listen more, talk less.” I agree.

I recently finished reading a book called: “Proof of Heaven” by Eben Alexander. It is an interesting book. I wanted to share one of the quotes from Alexander’s book that most resonated with me:

“You are loved. Those words are what I needed to hear as an orphan, as a child who’d been given away. But it’s also what every one of us in this materialistic age needs to hear as well, because in terms of who we really are, where we come from, and where we’re really going, we all feel (wrongly) like orphans.” Page 170

The author was adopted and at one point in his life had tried to find his birth parents, only to be told they were not interested in meeting him. He felt like an orphan all over again. Yet, in many ways whether we have lost our parents or not, if we do not feel loved, the result feels orphan-like. I had a professor in college that used to tell me: “You are loved, loving, lovable, needed, wanted, and useful. Right now.” She somehow always knew when I needed to hear those words. There were times in my life (college being one of them) when I did not hear the words “I love you” too often. Yet, those were the words I craved the most. We crave them when we need them the most. When you know you are loved, when you feel it, you do not question it. When you do not feel loved, you feel alone, on your own, and sometimes out in the wilderness.

It would be easy to say that you should know who you are, love yourself, and only then can you love others. That might be true, but before we can truly hold the comfort and confidence of who we are, we have to know, understand, and feel what love truly is, and what it feels like. Each individual understands what being loved feels like, some of us might have had the experience span our entire lifetime, and it might have been more intermittent for others, but we could not have continued living without understanding and knowing how being loved feels.

I often wonder if those committing evil acts today truly understood love? If they did, would they take a different road? If anger, misunderstanding, and revenge were replaced with love, the world would be a very different place.

What do you think?