Today almost got away from me, but it was a good day, and I got a lot accomplished. I'll leave you with a great quote by Louise Hay and a few thoughts, and then it will be off to bed so that tomorrow won't get away from me, too.
"If I want to be loved as I am, I have to be willing to love others as they are." –Louise Hay
No doubt about it, "loving" others just as they are is tough, especially when we don't like what they are. What gets in the way is our misunderstanding of the word, "love" and our bad habit of making judgments about other people.
Let's deal with the misunderstanding, first. What Louise Hay means by "love" is not the warm, personal love between good friends, lovers, or family members. It's "love" in the sense of goodwill or charity. It has more to do with tolerance and acceptance than with intimacy. And acceptance doesn't necessarily have anything to do with agreeing, condoning or approving, either. (There's that darned judgment, again!)
Loving someone as they are simply means recognizing another person as a child of God, and accepting that they have a right to be here, just as we do. It means letting them have their experience and allowing them, also, to reap the rewards or consequences of their own actions. It means setting aside our opinions of them, because our opinions are only worthwhile when we are making choices for our own lives, not when we are making choices for others. :-)
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