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Is this from http://wisdomofchopra.com/ http://wisdomofchopra.com/? /s But seriously, can you explain what you mean by this?

Viliam1234 6y ago
My guess would be that if someone doesn't love you even if you wish very much they would, then thinking about that person is just prolonging your suffering. Just stop. There are seven billion other people on this planet, pretty sure many of them are nice. But why would any of those many strangers love specifically you? One possible reason is that people reciprocate love. So your best strategy is to become a loving person yourself. And then, one of the people you meet, will return your feelings. And in the meanwhile, being a loving person already feels better than being focused on your own misery, so this is a bonus. Actually, it would probably be better to simply focus on being a loving person and not worry too much about when people start to return your love. Just make sure you meet many people; and if the strategy doesn't work for a while, change your environment. With so many good people out there, don't waste your time trying to squeeze some love out of the bad ones. The worst thing you can do to yourself is to remain in a bubble with the bad people, because then it seems like the entire universe is bad. (Oh, and if someone says "I may seem like a bad person to you, but trust me that the others are even worse", they are lying; don't argue with them, but go outside and try for yourself.)
- memling 6y ago
  > But why would any of those many strangers love specifically you? One possible reason is that people reciprocate love. So your best strategy is to become a loving person yourself. And then, one of the people you meet, will return your feelings. Is the purpose of love to be reciprocated? Is it worth loving if it isn't? Genuinely curious about your thoughts, and not trolling, but this prompted some interesting questions in my head and I was curious what you think.
  - shinryuu 6y ago
    I believe he is just describing a side effect of being a loving person.
  - Viliam1234 6y ago
    Humans have needs, and ignoring them probably wouldn't work well in long run, no matter how noble it might sound in abstract. If your needs are constantly frustrated, you will likely lose the motivation to do the noble things anyway. Then again, there are differences among people with regards to their needs. Like, an introverted person would probably be satisfied with a smaller number of friends; but would probably still want more than zero. To me it seems like it is important that some people reciprocate your feelings, and then it is not important that others don't. Like, if you love 20 people and 3 of them love you back, it's okay, but if you love 20 people and nobody loves you back, it's not okay. Of course the numbers are made up, may be different for different people, and it also matters a lot who loves you back and who doesn't, how specifically that love manifests, etc. I would make an analogy that if you are a cook, and you prepare meals for hundreds of people, and then you eat one meal yourself, that can make you fully satisfied. If you cannot eat, you will starve, and it doesn't make it any different for you whether you have prepared meals for other people or you didn't. So while we can make a true argument that feeding hundreds of other people is a great thing, that one meal that goes back to the cook is also important. Shortly, unreciprocated love can also make you happy, assuming that it is not all that you have. Feeling secure about being loved gives you the privilege that you can now be generous about the love you give, because you don't need anything more in return, and if something comes anyway, it's a nice bonus. Telling people who are currently not loved about how "loving others is better than being loved" is a bit like telling starving people to stop focusing on their hunger so much... the main message it delivers is that you actually don't give a fuck about their sufering. (Then, there are also people who never feel loved enough, because their mental problems prevent them from having healthy relationships, and trying to give them more love doesn't improve things at all, it just all vanishes in a black hole... It's complicated.) OK, now I am curious about your thoughts.
    - memling 6y ago
      Sorry for the delayed response--not out of unwillingness, but busy-ness. Your original response made me think of a few questions, but I think in the end it boiled down to asking what is the goal or purpose of love? Does it dovetail with a goal of maximizing happiness? (It seems to me no--that love can sometimes work towards our personal happiness and other times against it.) We often use the word love in a multi-faceted way that would be better served by multiple words. The ancient Greeks had (at least?) four words for love that were roughly differentiated by familial love, friendship love, erotic love, and an unconditional love. They varied, I suppose, in goal, expectation, depth or quality of feeling, et c. It seems like this last love was the sort that the father shows to his son. There is no real hope of reciprocation, nor yet a sort of surface-level happiness—indeed, it would be a very unhappy business for the most part. And yes, I think to your point there is probably some sustaining relationships there, too. At the same time, I expect there was pressure against him: remove life support, your kid's a vegetable, no hope here, et c. This isn't a love-nurturing environment exactly. I guess what I'd say is that at least in some cases love seems to work against our personal best interest, not for it, and that our happiness sometimes realigns along different boundaries. I.e., that happiness is perhaps more flexible than we might assume at first, and love perhaps a little less flexible? Again, just some ponderables. Thanks for the comment.
dmos62 6y ago
There's two statements in there. To unpoetic them, the first says that if you stop concentrating on the bad things, you'll find that there's an abundance of good things. The second is that while you may allow (maybe unconsciously) others to trigger emotions in you, you are the ultimate origin of your emotions, including love. Your emotional makeup is independent of external factors to the extent that you internalize this. I said this, because it's something I wish I had heard a long time ago.

Viliam1234 6y ago

My guess would be that if someone doesn't love you even if you wish very much they would, then thinking about that person is just prolonging your suffering. Just stop. There are seven billion other people on this planet, pretty sure many of them are nice. But why would any of those many strangers love specifically you? One possible reason is that people reciprocate love. So your best strategy is to become a loving person yourself. And then, one of the people you meet, will return your feelings. And in the meanwhile, being a loving person already feels better than being focused on your own misery, so this is a bonus. Actually, it would probably be better to simply focus on being a loving person and not worry too much about when people start to return your love. Just make sure you meet many people; and if the strategy doesn't work for a while, change your environment. With so many good people out there, don't waste your time trying to squeeze some love out of the bad ones. The worst thing you can do to yourself is to remain in a bubble with the bad people, because then it seems like the entire universe is bad. (Oh, and if someone says "I may seem like a bad person to you, but trust me that the others are even worse", they are lying; don't argue with them, but go outside and try for yourself.)

memling 6y ago
> But why would any of those many strangers love specifically you? One possible reason is that people reciprocate love. So your best strategy is to become a loving person yourself. And then, one of the people you meet, will return your feelings. Is the purpose of love to be reciprocated? Is it worth loving if it isn't? Genuinely curious about your thoughts, and not trolling, but this prompted some interesting questions in my head and I was curious what you think.
- shinryuu 6y ago
  I believe he is just describing a side effect of being a loving person.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  Humans have needs, and ignoring them probably wouldn't work well in long run, no matter how noble it might sound in abstract. If your needs are constantly frustrated, you will likely lose the motivation to do the noble things anyway. Then again, there are differences among people with regards to their needs. Like, an introverted person would probably be satisfied with a smaller number of friends; but would probably still want more than zero. To me it seems like it is important that some people reciprocate your feelings, and then it is not important that others don't. Like, if you love 20 people and 3 of them love you back, it's okay, but if you love 20 people and nobody loves you back, it's not okay. Of course the numbers are made up, may be different for different people, and it also matters a lot who loves you back and who doesn't, how specifically that love manifests, etc. I would make an analogy that if you are a cook, and you prepare meals for hundreds of people, and then you eat one meal yourself, that can make you fully satisfied. If you cannot eat, you will starve, and it doesn't make it any different for you whether you have prepared meals for other people or you didn't. So while we can make a true argument that feeding hundreds of other people is a great thing, that one meal that goes back to the cook is also important. Shortly, unreciprocated love can also make you happy, assuming that it is not all that you have. Feeling secure about being loved gives you the privilege that you can now be generous about the love you give, because you don't need anything more in return, and if something comes anyway, it's a nice bonus. Telling people who are currently not loved about how "loving others is better than being loved" is a bit like telling starving people to stop focusing on their hunger so much... the main message it delivers is that you actually don't give a fuck about their sufering. (Then, there are also people who never feel loved enough, because their mental problems prevent them from having healthy relationships, and trying to give them more love doesn't improve things at all, it just all vanishes in a black hole... It's complicated.) OK, now I am curious about your thoughts.
  - memling 6y ago
    Sorry for the delayed response--not out of unwillingness, but busy-ness. Your original response made me think of a few questions, but I think in the end it boiled down to asking what is the goal or purpose of love? Does it dovetail with a goal of maximizing happiness? (It seems to me no--that love can sometimes work towards our personal happiness and other times against it.) We often use the word love in a multi-faceted way that would be better served by multiple words. The ancient Greeks had (at least?) four words for love that were roughly differentiated by familial love, friendship love, erotic love, and an unconditional love. They varied, I suppose, in goal, expectation, depth or quality of feeling, et c. It seems like this last love was the sort that the father shows to his son. There is no real hope of reciprocation, nor yet a sort of surface-level happiness—indeed, it would be a very unhappy business for the most part. And yes, I think to your point there is probably some sustaining relationships there, too. At the same time, I expect there was pressure against him: remove life support, your kid's a vegetable, no hope here, et c. This isn't a love-nurturing environment exactly. I guess what I'd say is that at least in some cases love seems to work against our personal best interest, not for it, and that our happiness sometimes realigns along different boundaries. I.e., that happiness is perhaps more flexible than we might assume at first, and love perhaps a little less flexible? Again, just some ponderables. Thanks for the comment.

dmos62 6y ago

There's two statements in there. To unpoetic them, the first says that if you stop concentrating on the bad things, you'll find that there's an abundance of good things. The second is that while you may allow (maybe unconsciously) others to trigger emotions in you, you are the ultimate origin of your emotions, including love. Your emotional makeup is independent of external factors to the extent that you internalize this. I said this, because it's something I wish I had heard a long time ago.