Thought experiment: You have to decide between one of two lives.
In life A-
Youve been brought up in a very wealthy family and it is clear that you will never have financial concerns as long as you live. But, as bad fortune would have it, you have never found love. You have a lukewarm relationship with your parents and siblings. And in spite of paying for the upgraded version of every dating app that you can think of, you have never found a special someone, and you've kind of given up on thinking that it might even be possible. And you often feel lonely, in spite of all your riches.
In life B-
You are deeply in love with someone you are sure is the person of your dreams-your soulmate. You share everything together on a daily basis and you each find so much joy spending time together. And you trust one another completely. But, you and your partner are often in over your heads financially and you find yourself struggling to pay your bills on time each month. You manage, but it's not easy.
I don't know about you, but personally, I'd choose Life B; love without money. No question.
As Abraham Maslow first suggested in the 1940s, love is one of the basic human needs.
While love often gets a bad rap as some experience that is really only for dreamers, all kinds of evidence suggests that love is a real feature of our evolved psychology. Love, which seems to encourage people to form deep connections and bonds with others, plays a powerful role in not only creating happiness but in helping people to develop healthy alliances and communities that have the capacity to lead to all kinds of benefits. In short: Love is a real thing.
A great thing about love is that it can characterize relationship types. Romantic or intimate-relationship-based love is usually what the term love conjures up. But, there are all kinds of important types of loving relationships. Love often characterizes relationships between siblings, parents and children, grandparents and grand-offspring, close friends, and even pet owners and pets.
Unfortunately, love is not always easy to find. And it often has a way of dissipating over the course of relationships. Love is a tricky beast.
If you think about your lowest moments in life, my guess is that a good proportion of those moments might be found at times when you felt unloved. Such experiences might include:
Feeling unappreciated and unseen from your own parent or parents
Experiencing betrayal in a long-standing friendship
Experiencing betrayal in a long-standing romantic relationship
Being abandoned by a loved one
Feeling dismissed or insulted by someone close to you
We evolved to seek, develop, and cultivate truly loving relationships. And for this reason, feeling unloved, which can happen a variety of ways, is about as horrible an experience as one might find in life.
Want to get the most out of the ride during your limited time here? I say lin one way or another, you might want to seek out truly loving relationships. As Maslow wrote years ago, love genuinely is a foundational experience toward thriving at all levels. When Paul McCartney and John Lennon sang, in 1967, "all you need is love," they totally nailed it.
Love is all you need.
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