Choose to Give the Gift of Love

As we journey into the new year, there are many gifts we can give ourselves and others. The greatest gift we can give is and always will be love. Love is the only gift that guarantees lasting happiness.

I learned a valuable lesson about the gift of love/happiness in a recent visit with some friends who just had a baby. Shortly after I arrived at their house, Dad and his Mother-in-Law got into a tiff with each other. Apparently something had been brewing between the two of them and they allowed it to spill over—onto all of us. Why? Because they were neither one coming from a loving place. And they were willing to sacrifice their happiness by holding on to their rightness. They chose to be justified in their perceived rightness rather than to be justified authentically by swallowing their pride and allowing love to carry them to a higher place.

What they didn’t understand was that in choosing to stick to their rightness, they both sacrificed their happiness. We were about to have a wonderful dinner when all of the ruckus blew-up. Now, Mother-in-Law wasn’t hungry anymore and decided that she was leaving. No one could dissuade her. She had chosen to be miserable in her rightness, rather than choosing to refrain from taking personally what her Son-in-Law had said. She wanted to take it personally, she wanted to have something to be upset about and she wanted to make a scene by leaving.

I sat there and thought “This makes no sense to me anymore.” There was a day when it would have made perfect sense to me, back when I was so codependent that I took personally everything that anyone said or did. Back then, I was looking to be the victim and I needed the drama to make me feel alive. But not anymore. I’d much rather come from a loving place today and choose to be happy instead of choosing to be the victim.

We can allow ourselves to choose love/happiness in these sort of situations and we can choose to be the victors, or we can allow ourselves to choose personal rightness/misery and choose to be the victims. And this is true whether we are the primary “actors” in the drama or just the “audience” to the drama. In this case I was a member of the “audience.” I was party to it and I was indirectly affected by it. This particular little “play” made me feel uncomfortable. I had just arrived and I already felt as if I should have stayed home. But I also understood that I had a choice. I could choose to make this little drama my problem by attempting to own the feelings of the two antagonists, or I could choose to own my personal feelings by deciding that this was not my problem and that it was not going to affect my serenity.

Obviously I chose the latter. I chose to come from a loving place that allowed me to be responsible for my own happiness. And ultimately I choose not to be negatively impacted by the little drama I had witnessed. If Dad was going to be on the defensive and if Mother-in-Law was going to walk out the door; if Mom was going to be frustrated because her Mother left in a huff, so be it. I was going to enjoy my dinner and be of good spirits around those who chose to stay and enjoy each others company.

Remember, no one can take your happiness away. But you can give it away to others. You choose to retain your own happiness when you choose to always come from a loving place, rather than coming from a wounded or self-righteous place. So choose the best gift you can give this new year, to yourself and others, by choosing to come from that loving place where happiness triumphs!