Substitute gratifications

         "While women generally recognize the central place of love in everything, men are more often more reluctant to acknowledge this. ‘Please don’t reduce everything to that,’ I can hear many male readers groaning. ‘I have more important business to attend to than feeling loved.’ But think about it: The author who writes a best-seller, the politician who wins an election, the businessman who gains a promotion or an important contract – all feel good about themselves because a little love has flowed their way, in the form of recognition, praise, or appreciation. Even the trader who reaps a stock market windfall feels that the gods are smiling on him.

           At bottom, most of the things we strive for – security, success, wealth, status, power, recognition, validation, praise – are ways of trying to fill a gaping hole within us, a hole formed out of our separation from love. As ways of trying to win love indirectly, these substitute gratifications do not truly nourish us, because they do not deliver the real thing. In that sense, they are like junk food. Their failure to truly nourish only intensifies our inner hunger, driving us to run all the harder on the hamster wheel of success, desperately hoping to win some reward that will truly satisfy.

         Yet if love is so central to who we are, why do we often feel so separated from it? All the great spiritual traditions have addressed the question of why people treat each other so badly and the world is such a mess. They have provided various explanations for this, such as ignorance, bad karma, original sin, egocentricity, or the failure to recognize love as our very nature. Yet what is the root cause of these afflictions?"

     Welwood J. Perfect love, imperfect relationships. Healing the wound of the heart. Trumpeter, Boston, 2006.

Photo: Greg Burke   http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/your-shot/weekly-wrapper