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Appreciating Our Loved Ones While They’re Here
by Walter E. Jacobson · Filed Under: Happiness · Personal Development · Relationships · Well-Being · marriage · self-help
We tend to under-appreciate the loved ones in our lives while they’re here.
We tend to take them for granted. We tend to assume they’ll always be here. We don’t express to them nearly enough how much we care for them and how important they are in our lives.
And then, when they’re gone, there is an effusion of love, grief and remorse as well, due to feelings that we didn’t cherish, respect, value and love them more while they were here.
So what can we do about this?
Perhaps we need to start missing our loved ones now before they’re gone, appreciating the void that would be created in our lives if they were abruptly taken from us.
And then we need to express our gratitude for having them in our lives and demonstrate our love for them while they’re still here by maximizing our loving behaviors towards them and minimizing our unloving behaviors.
We need to let go of the petty grievances that we’ve been holding against them. We need to let go of old resentments and hurts.
If we have a tendency to yell, we stop yelling. If we have a tendency to abuse them in other ways, we stop the abuse.
If our tendency is to exaggerate, misrepresent the truth, lie and deny, we stop these behaviors as well.
We stop being inconsiderate, selfish and self-centered.
We listen. We validate. We respect their boundaries.
We recognize those aspects of ourselves we need to change and we work on making those changes.
We try to anticipate problems and offer solutions, without being asked and without needing to get anything in return.
When the inevitable finally does happen and our loved ones are gone, we will still grieve and miss them deeply, but there will be the satisfaction and the peace of mind knowing that while they were here we did everything we could to create and maintain a loving relationship with them and to let them know and feel the extent of our love, respect and devotion to them.
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Wow! Do you ever have that right! There is no question, for the most part, that we very much “under-apreciate” those we love and have relationships with — we take them forgranted. We do indeed assume that they’ll always be in our lives and we really don’t think into the future that they could be gone at any time.
We’re a society of people who find it easier to say “I’m sorry” than to rectify a situation or to take the time and effort to put our whole selves into a relationship while that person is still with us. We somehow find a weird gratification, for example, in choosing an elaborate casket or memorial stone or flattering lines in an obituary that proclaim our love and affection for the deceased. We make every effort to attend the funeral/memorial service, paying our last respects AFTER the fact instead of expressing our love and appreciation directly to the living person. Somehow, for most people, that reflects/validates the relationship and makes it all okay.
Alas, as ideal as it would be to stop our negative behavior while our loved ones are here, we forget
and continue business as usual because it’s just less work than to have to reaffirm our feelings periodically. Now that the new year is upon us, it would be in our best interests to pony up and consciously express our feelings/sentiments to our loved ones either verbally or in writing — whatever. We must train ourselves to NOT wait until it’s too late if only because The Grim Reaper
waits for no one.
thanks for your insightful comments. i appreciate you taking the time to share them with me and my readers.