Welcome! Happy St. Patrick’s Day. Next week is also mine and Lady Linda’s 20th wedding anniversary. The weather here in the northeast is finally starting to get a little warmer. It’s great to see people out and about. As always, You’re Amazing And I’ll Prove It!
Now for this week’s story:
Not long-ago Lady Linda and I were walking down the sidewalk when suddenly she tripped on an uneven portion. When she tripped, she fell. I stood there and looked at her. Why did I not help her?
I hear the word Love all the time. I love him/her. I love my children. I love my Sister or Brother, aunt or uncle, mom or dad etc. But what is the Greatest form of Love one person can show to another?
As you probably already know Lady Linda and I had a housecleaning business for more than 20 years. Through those 20 years we had customers for years. Every week or two she and I would go into their homes and clean. Many of these customers worked from home, meaning they were home when Lady Linda and I were in their homes.
During this time of going into their homes every week or two, with them home, Lady Linda and I became like family. So much so that one cleaning day Lady Linda and I brought our 20-year-old son to help us.
The client had never met our son. When we walked in the client, a woman, was sitting in her easy chair with her robe and slippers on, drinking coffee. Her hair was disheveled, and she had no makeup on. Instantly upon seeing a stranger she jumped up, shouting “you brought company”. She ran to her bedroom, put on a nice outfit, fixed her hair, and put on makeup before we could introduce our son. Now that’s family. This gave me a fairly unique vantage point to view how different families function behind closed doors.
The first question I have is, is love politics, religion, skin color (race), or sexual preference? During the time Lady Linda and I cleaned houses our clients ran the gamut in all four categories. Politically we had everyone from devout communists to devout capitalists and everything in between. Religiously, we had Buddhists, Jewish, Christians, and Muslims. We had every skin color and as far as sexual orientation we had all walks of life in that category as well.
Every last family, we became part of, loved one another deeply. They cared about their neighbors, their town and country. There are no exceptions of any kind.
This means love isn’t politics, religion, skin color (race), or sexual preference. Then perhaps it’s taking care of each other. Also, if it is taking care of each other, what does taking care of each other mean?
Because I am 66 years old, I have a lot of reference points to answer the question, is love taking care of each other? I will continue to use Lady Linda and my housecleaning family as my reference in this blog.
As I have said, all the families loved one another, but they did have different ways of taking care of each other. Specifically of importance for this blog is the raising of the kids and how the husbands and wives treated each other. Remember we were in the housecleaning business for more than 20 years. This means when we first started some of the families had young children, some still in the crib and we watched them grow into adulthood.
Other families had young adult children. We watched these young adult children, in their mid to late twenties grow into their 50’s.
There were clients where the spouses didn’t talk to one another, others where one of the spouses did everything for their partner, and still others who worked together.
Because there are so many examples, in order to keep this blog a reasonable length, I will just hit the highlights.
Lady Linda and I watched several young kids grow up where the parents did everything for them. Making life as easy as possible. These kids are now in their mid-late 20s and some in their 30’s, still living at home dependent on their parents.
We watched several young adult kids grow into their 50’s where the parents did everything for them. They are living in their parents’ basement without jobs. Totally dependent on their parents.
The spouses that sat around and did nothing while their partner did everything for them, wound up virtually chair bound, or they are totally wheelchair bound. One of them sat in their chair day in and day out for more than six years and is still sitting.
Some have had knee or hip replacements. Still others have had both knees and hips replaced. The knee and hip replacement in the individuals who had everything done for them never worked out. The individual wasn’t motivated enough to do the work that was necessary to get better. They want someone else to do it for them. I asked several people how they were doing. They told me that the therapist wasn’t doing enough. When I asked them if they were exercising on their own, they said “No” that’s the therapist’s job. These people are in pain 24/7 and are imprisoned in their own bodies..
With all that said, there were also parents that challenged and encouraged their kids as they grew up. These kids are now living on their own, many of them are married and have kids of their own. They are totally independent of their parents.
We also had clients who were in their late 60’s when we started, and we watched them grow into their 90’s. They were healthy when we met them and going into their 90’s they are still healthy. These clients do light exercising and stretching on a regular basis. These clients take responsibility for their own health. They also keep themselves mentally healthy with hobbies and public or volunteer service.
The same goes for couples who work together as a team. Helping and encouraging each other stay in shape mentally, spiritually, and physically.
As you can see all of the families care about one another, but are they showing one another the Greatest Love a person can show another person? Answer, some of them are and others, although trying, are not.
So how do you show another person the Greatest form of love you can show? I learned the answer to this question when I was 9 years old.
It was a beautiful sunny summer day, so I went to a friend’s house to play. I knocked on the door to ask Billy’s mom if he could come out and play. When she answered the door, she excitedly asked “Did you hear it? Did you hear it?” I said, “Hear what”? She continued, “I was upstairs with the window open when all of a sudden I heard the loudest angry screeching I had ever heard. I rushed to the window and looked outside. Just outside the window is a tree with a mother bird in her nest. She was leaning over the outside of the nest looking and screaming at a baby bird on the ground under the tree. The baby was flapping it’s wings and screaming back at mom. It wasn’t too long, and the baby bird started to fly.
Apparently, momma bird had thrown her baby out of the nest. When the baby protested from the ground mom screamed at the baby, “You Fly Or You Die”.
You see mom knew she was not going to be able to protect her baby forever. The baby had to learn to fly and take care of itself without mom.
The Greatest Love someone can give to another person is the gift of independence. If you truly want the very best for your loved ones and as well as the people around you, you will do everything in your power to give them all the tools they need to survive totally independent of anyone. Also, because your loved ones can survive totally independent of you, this gives them the option to stay with you or leave. Obviously as a parent your job is to raise your kids to be totally independent.
But if we are talking about a spouse or a partner, why would you want them to be so independent that they have the choice whether to stay or leave?
Building them up so they are so independent that they could leave may seem like a negative, I see it as a tremendous positive for a few reasons.
- It takes a great deal of energy to hold a person down making them dependent on you. For me, going this route takes too much energy and when push comes to shove, I don’t know if this person (I ran down) is going to back me up or even be able to back me up mentally, spiritually, or physically. So, this option is out for me.
- If I build this person up giving them everything, they need to be 100% independent of me and they leave. Well, they were going to leave anyway, so I might as well find out now and move on to a partner that will return the love of helping me to also be independent.
- My strategy is to build my partner up giving them 100% of everything they need to survive without me. At the same time, I am doing everything I can to bring out the best in my partner. If this person chooses to stay because they want to stay, o my God you have something really special now. You have a partner you can rely on during good times and bad times. Because you both work so hard at building each other’s independence skills, you are forming a tightknit unbreakable team of Love.
Because there are times when you want to help, but you’re wondering to yourself what is the right thing to do, ask yourself if I was not here, could this person help themselves? If the answer is yes, go ahead and help. If the answer is I don’t know, watch and wait. If the answer is no, start teaching your loved one how to be independent.
This brings us back to the beginning of this blog where Lady Linda had just fallen because of an uneven sidewalk and as she laid there I watched and did not help.
Lady Linda is 69 years old, so the first thing I was looking for was, was she hurt? Had she been hurt, obviously I would have done everything possible to help her. Once I determined she was not hurt, the next question was if I was not here could she get up. Lady Linda got up, brushed herself off and, although embarrassed at first, started walking away.
I asked her why she was embarrassed. She said, “Because I Fell”. I said, “Linda everybody falls from time to time. But do you realize you are a 69-year-old woman who took a pretty bad fall, jumped up, and continued on your way like a teenager? You are taking very good care of yourself. I am proud of You.”
With this way of thinking, in my opinion, when I help my partner to be independent, I am also being selfish. The more I help her to stay independently healthy, the more she wants to stay and work on our lives together. This goes for Lady Linda also in making sure I am also independent.
Understand what the Greatest Love you can show another person is and show it every day! Give them the gift of INDEPENDENCE.
You’re Amazing And I’ll Prove It!
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Neal Brownell The Crazy Inventor
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