If You Don’t Heal What Hurt You, You’ll Bleed on People Who Didn’t Cut You

          "If You Don’t Heal What Hurt You, You’ll Bleed on People Who Didn’t Cut You."

                                                                                                                           -Unknown

            All the ruckus in the world is a result of not loving ourselves enough and not healing ourselves from what broke us. Anger, greed, jealousy, insecurity, lust, power are the emotions that we spill on others to meet our own shortcomings. This is because most of us run away from our emotions like grief, jealousy, insecurity and the like. We think that by running away, we can get rid of such emotions. In reality, it takes courage and strength to completely experience such emotions. Once we experience them and be witness to all the thoughts without shaking, we are free from those thoughts and experiences. That is what saints call "freedom". Freedom from the attachment to thought. Thought still exists, the memory still exists but our mind is still, like water in a river.  This process looks like a simple one but in reality, almost all of us are struggling to make peace with such emotions and experiences in us. Every time we make peace with an incident and the related emotions, we grow; our soul expands and we are free from similar emotions in the future. That is what we call growing strong or becoming a mature human being. There is no scale to measure the strength and maturity of humans as each individual perceives their emotions and experiences differently. What might look like a life-changing event for you might be a simple event for me. Does that mean I don't value your emotion? No.

             In this game of constantly trying to be on the same page with our dear ones, we get hurt over and over not understanding what they mean and why they're hurt. The only key to such a situation is "self-love". If we love ourselves like how we want to love our dear ones, if we are compassionate to ourselves like how we are towards others, if we understand ourselves first, we understand others. As much as it sounds cliched but true, if we don't love ourselves enough, we cannot love others fully, completely. Lack of self-love creates doubt, anger, insecurity which thereby leads to hurting people whom we love the most. After all, who is going to bear our tantrums other than those who love us the most? But is it right on our part to throw tantrums on the people who are supposed to be loved, cherished, and celebrated as the gifts of god for us? When we go beyond throwing tantrums, we are called toxic. When we become toxic, not just everyone but we sense it. We start hating our words, presence, actions yet to meet our shortcoming and inefficiency, we complicate it even more but spilling more and more toxicity on our dear ones.

"If the ocean can calm itself, so can you. we are both salt water mixed with air" - Nayyirah Waheed

 As mentioned in the title quote, before behaving rudely to your dear ones, question yourself the following questions. 

1. Is my emotion a valid emotion or is it coming from somewhere else in the past? If it is not valid, is it right on my part to spill poison on my dear ones who are not responsible for such emotion?

2. If the emotion is valid, can I communicate before assuming or coming to conclusions? Can I be more patient?

3. Should I bleed on people who didn't break me?

Such practice is easier said than done. But what do we achieve out of it? Love, Peace, and Freedom. 

As I was reading heartfulness magazine this month, here are the known yet important ways to reiterate the path of self-love. 

1. Own the bad moments. 

2. Speak to yourself the way you would speak to your friends and family. 

3. Refram "mistake" as a "learning lesson".

4. Take the compliment. 

5. Give yourself the compliment. 

6. Throw judgment out of the window. 

7. Create self-compassion practices. 

8. Have vulnerable conversations. 

9. Push yourself in healthy ways. 

10. Make space for gratitude.  

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

― Rumi