Why Love Is Not About Being Useful
“My feelings of inadequacy are simply feelings. They can’t show me the full truth about myself – who I am in God’s eyes.” - Sr. Marie Paul Curley (Seeing Yourself Through God’s Eyes)
I’ve been having some doubts about my work recently. I was wondering whether what I’m doing has some value in it. Was I doing something that could help other people? Do I really have the gift to continue what I’m doing now?
After more than ten years blogging and writing books, I ask myself whether I have achieved something useful. And if I have failed in this, what have I truly done with my life?
Times of Crisis
Whenever we encounter times of crisis in our lives, and we start to feel weak or helpless, we may also start to doubt about our self-worth. We may ask ourselves, “Now that I feel so powerless, would other people still appreciate me? Am I still worthy to be loved?”
We may feel that we couldn’t do anything right. We want to help, but we are powerless to do so. We strive so hard to make things work, but we encounter one failure after another. We feel so useless. And because we feel that way, we doubt how we could still be loved.
Love and Usefulness
If we think about it more deeply, however, we’d discover how this kind of thinking could never lead us to the right place. Think about it. Is love just a matter of usefulness? Do we love other people because we could benefit from them?
Think about a newborn child. It’s so helpless that it couldn’t do anything on its own. Is this any reason then that a child should not be loved?
Always thinking about our usefulness only brings us anxiety and fear. We fear we’d never succeed the way we were expected to. We fear getting sick. We fear losing our careers. We fear losing everything to which we have attached our sense of worth.
Proving Ourselves
Must we constantly need to prove ourselves just to be worthy of love?
“The real measure of a man’s worth is how much he would be worth if he lost all his money.” – Harold J. Smith
You don’t need to prove you are useful just so you could be loved. Remember that love is not about that.
We use things. We love people.
And we love people just because of who they are.
“Sensing its fundamental unreality, the false self wraps itself in experience – experiences of power, pleasure and honour; Basil Pennington suggests that the core of the false self is the belief that my value depends on what I have, what I can do and what others think of me.” – David G. Benner(The Gift of Being Yourself)
What Love Is
Love is not about being useful. It is not about being stronger or wealthier or more beautiful.
Love is not about competition. It is not a race for the fastest one to win the prize.
Love is not about efficiency or productivity. It is not about numbers or keeping count.
Love is not about what you can get. It is about what you can give.
Love is not about loving a faceless crowd. It is about loving one unique person at a time.
Love is not about avoiding pain. It is continuing to care for another despite the hurts and difficulties that come along.
Love is not about controlling. It is about true freedom.
Love is not about lies. It is about being true to oneself and one’s desires.
And since loves is like this, love is never an easy thing to grasp. Love will always include taking chances and making sacrifices. Love will always require that we give everything, for nothing is truly worth living for in this world save for LOVE.
“I only know Divine unconditional, radical and reckless love for me when I dare to approach God just as I am. The more I have the courage to meet God in this place of weakness, the more I will know myself to be truly and deeply loved by God.” – David G. Benner(The Gift of Being Yourself)
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"You are not your past nor your wounds nor your fears. Let no momentary setback keep you from fulfilling God's best plan for your life!"
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