Are you among those who wait to seek heaven after death, despite the fact that you can experience it even while breathing! Don't you know that there is heaven on earth? It is right here, within you, near you and the only way you can witness it is by expressing and experiencing love.
Swami Vivekananda in his well conferred quote, “All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction,” persuades mankind by unfolding an abstract notion of expansion and contraction thereby ensuring that people comprehend the authentic meaning of love and self-seeking.
A beautiful write-up from the book, ‘Called to share his life' caught my eye while glancing through, which went as follows, “It is in loving and not being loved, the heart finds its quest; it is in giving and not in getting, our lives are blest”. Such a pleasing phrase! My heart was certainly blessed! Love is such an intimate, subtle and strong sentiment, an expression which can drive positivity in an individual's life. It is observed that when a person encounters love, he unbars himself and ventures into a pristine world, embracing distinct opportunities. Therefore love is not merely a materialistic entity but a belief that transfigures a person completely, including his perception and speculation.
On the contrary, selfishness is the antithesis of love. It is a feeling of being self-centred. A human possessing such an attitude can never gaze beyond the horizon of himself and his world, can never expand himself or his peculiar way of anticipation and remains contracted, confined to his own shell. Relating this to Swami's quote, he clearly conveys that a person who loves has the ability to live whilst death awaits those who are selfish.
But supposing your love turns to selfish love? Have you ever experienced such a dilemma? When you cross-question yourself, you probably go to the back of your mind and start pondering upon the same, don't you? However the chaos of selfish love and selfishness, cannot overpower ‘selfless love'.
Sadhu Vaswani once said, “True love is selfless, and it's prepared to sacrifice." Looking at this from the perspective of Swami's quote, what could be the greatest example than that of our very own mother? A mother loves her child even before she conceives, she bears the labour stoically-merely to breathe new life into her infant and the love sustains as the child grows. However, now and then we are so contracted that at times, we abstain to express the love they actually deserve, thus undoubtedly making mothers a true epitome of selfless love and sacrifice.
“Do small things with great love." Such lucid phrase and so is the memoir of the personality quoting it. Desiring to pursue a career and earn, destiny led her to serve the waifs. She illustrated selflessness and humility, also exemplified by her acts of love-feeding the hungry, catering to their needs neglecting her own. A beautiful soul to commemorate who devoted her life for the impoverished. She believed that, “money can be gotten, but people need your hearts to love them” and her selflessness blessed her with the alms of love and jubilation, thus her love and personality expanded among mankind due to which she attained the title of “mother". Yes you have guessed right, she is none other than Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Analysing the contemporary situation, many of today's politicians are live example of altruistic behaviour. However, only a handful of them work with utter sincerity, for many, their generosity is just for the sake of getting votes- selfish love. They are predominantly obsessed with stuffing their bank accounts, and are so self-centred that they ruin the harmony and are unconcerned with regards to the matter of society. Once again, placing this in the context of Swami's words, they are contracted to their four walled- air conditioned world, their power and position. Such a contraction eventually leads them to not serve those dependant on them thus making a mockery of our democracy.
It is important to remember that nothing could be crueller than the selfish motives of domination, power and immortality of dictatorship. From Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mussolini, Idi Amin to Irma Grese, Wu Zetain and Elizabeth Bathory. A common denominator among them was, their effervescent self-possessed, insatiable desire for control that was meant to serve only their own purposes.
History has also witnessed people like The Mahatma, Martin Luther King who let their love expand and embrace others in its generosity.
If we are to work towards creating a better world for the future generations, we need to lay emphasis on the importance of expanding our love to embrace all religions, cultures, minorities, sects in order to make our world a better place.
So to conclude, always remember wise words uttered by Loch Kelly which are applicable to our lives, “unconditional love flows through specific channels of respect, integrity, purpose, meaning, value, response-ability, forgiveness, kindness, and compassion — and these form the foundation of our new, naturally ethical lives”.