Love Thy Neighbour

You have heard it said, love your neighbour as yourself, but I say…love your neighbour as they want to be loved.

It may come as a surprise, but, not everyone wants to be loved in the same way that we would like to be loved. Sometimes we care and love, and act that out without regard to how the other person might actually like to be treated. It’s a simple mistake, we simply forget to ask, and just bash on with our caring and loving.

This is often the case in intimate relationships. We can maintain beliefs in mystical connections at the expense of learning how to navigate the quagmire of real communication…real requests…and real listening.

It’s a little bit like buying a present for someone, and mistaking our own excitement about the gift, with the actual appreciation that person might have for it. Traditionally, the receiver has been socially obliged to be grateful regardless of the gift’s suitability. After all, at worst, it was a bad guess, and we all know we can put the rubbish present in the box with the other bits’n’bobs, or donate it to the charity shop.

However, when it comes to loving and caring, this kind of disparity can cause even more discomfort and unease, than an unwanted itchy jumper. Many of us like to believe that when we love another, the other is somehow essentially connected to us, and this can easily lead us to believing that the other is essentially the same as us.

It’s so easy to do, to mix up the pleasure of our loving intent, with what might actually end up being unappreciated, or worse, causing harm…like Bad Aid or Bad Intervention. People who are blindly caught up in the energy of their own good actions can do things that cause harm. Aid organisations injecting huge quantities of free rice or clothing can cripple the other’s economy in this exchange, whilst overbearing interference can undervalue the autonomy of the other.

We can end up caring carelessly.

But imagine this: imagine that we communicated honestly with one another, without fear of causing offence or upset, and suggested the ways we like to be looked after, cared for and loved, even if that meant we’d rather go-it-alone. Of course, the other person is not obliged to conform, but at least it would be out in the open. We could listen to each other’s differences and figure something out…something a little bit better.

And you never know, you might stop getting those itchy jumpers that you hate.