Kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity… this is the shortest answer one can give to the question “how to be loved.” That means your love should be kind, compassionate, and balanced. You should be happy when you love. Don’t think loving is an easy thing. Love is true only when you love a person with these four factors.
Only a person who feels happiness in loving can love others. For example, imagine that a husband and wife are mentally estranged. At this time, as usual, children come to talk about school news or ask doubts in the textbook. What usually happens is that we get angry with our children and hurt them with inappropriate words. Because there is no happiness within us. It means only a happy person can love.
Those who are in true love do not distance themselves from each other. There are no distinctions and no discriminations. That is why one feels another’s happiness as one’s own happiness and another’s sadness as one’s own sadness. There is no mutual blaming even if any of them make a mistake.
Love without mutual trust and faith is not love. We may have many friends. But how many of them do we trust? If there is someone who can be trusted so much that you confide everything to him, then he is your real friend. All others are just acquaintances, classmates, or colleagues.
Your capability to love a person depends upon your capability to be faithful to that person. To love someone means to understand that person, and to understand means listening to him. When we love someone, we should be able to comfort him and alleviate his suffering. That is where love becomes an art. And if you cannot understand the reason for the other’s suffering and pain, you will not be able to heal his wounds. When you understand more, you can love more. The more you love, the more you understand. Both are two sides of the same reality. The mind to love and the mind to understand are the same.
