My fren 4wded this to me. Found it very meaningful.
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‘If you sacrifice your own growth and talent for love, you absolutely will not find happiness.”
It is as natural for young people to fall in love as it is for flowers to bloom in spring.
And yet, the agonies of love are many and varied.
While everyone is free to fall in love or be attracted to someone, and no one has the right to meddle in your private affairs, I feel it is also important not to lose sight of pursuing your own personal development. There are of course no rules on love and marriage, and no one has the right to restrict you in any way. But I hate to see young people getting involved in frivolous relationships, and suffering and agonising over them when they should be fulfilled and happy.
My mentor in life, Mr Toda, often said that when women act with dignity in relationships, problems can be avoided. Women, he said, should not have an easy-going, careless attitude concerning love, as this may lead to regrets and suffering.
While I am writing this with young women particularly in mind, much of what I am saying also applies to young men.
To me, love should be a force that helps us expand our lives and bring out our potential with fresh vitality. This is the ideal, but all too often, people lose all objectivity when they fall in love.
The question is “does this person inspire you to work harder, or distract you from what you have to do? Does their presence make you more determined to devote great energies to your activities, to be a better person? Do they inspire you to realise your future goals and work towards them? Or is that person your central focus, overshadowing everything else?”
If you find that you are neglecting things you should be doing, forgetting your purpose in life because of the relationship you are in, then I would guess that you might be on the wrong path. A healthy relationship, in my view, is one in which two people encourage each other to reach their respective goals, while sharing each other’s hopes and dreams. A relationship should be a source of inspiration, invigoration and hope.
Rather than becoming so love-struck that you create a world in which only the two of you exist, it is much healthier to learn from those aspects of your loved one that you respect and admire, and continue to make efforts to improve and develop yourself. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of the The Little Prince, once wrote, ‘Love is not two people gazing at each other, but two people looking ahead together in the same direction.”
Of course, much of daily life tends to be ordinary and unexciting. Making steady effort to improve ourselves can be trying. And then, when your fall in love, life seems filled with drama and excitement and you feel like the leading character in a book. But if you lose yourself in love just because you are bored, and veer from your path in life, then love is nothing more than escapism. But sadly many people believe that this kind of love is the be-all and end-all, deluding themselves that as long as they are in love, nothing else matters.
Even if you try to use love as an escape, the euphoria is unlikely to last for long. If anything, you may find yourself with more problems along with a great deal of pain and sadness. However much you may try, you can never run away from yourself. If you remain weak inside, suffering will only follow you wherever you go. You will never find happiness if you do not change yourself from within. Happiness is not something that anyone else, even a lover, can give you. You have to achieve it by yourself. And, the only way to do so is by developing your own character and capacity as a human being, by fully maximising your potential. If you sacrifice your own growth and talent for love, you absolutely will not find happiness.
My concern in saying this is purely for the sake of young people – particularly young women who are often very vulnerable to persuasion by young men. They can sometimes act as if they are stunned and lose their ability to make calm, rational decisions. Since young women are the ones who most often get hurt, they have every right to assert their dignity and look after their own welfare.
It is precisely for this reason that I feel it is important for young women to develop inner strength and self-respect.
It is demeaning to be constantly seeking approval. If you find yourself in a relationship where you are not treated the way your hearts tell you should be, I hope you will have the courage and dignity to decide that you are better off running the risk of being alone for the time being rather than enduring an unhappy relationship.
Real love is not two people clinging to each other; it can only be fostered between two strong people secure in their individuality. A shallow person will only have shallow relationships. If you want to experience real love, it is important first to develop a strong self-identity. True love is not about doing whatever the other person wants you to do, or pretending that you are something you are not. Ideal love is fostered only between two sincere, mature and independent people.
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Source: ‘Daisaku Ikeda, A Piece of Mirror and other Essays, Soka Gakkai Malaysia (SGM), 2004.’
Accessed on 1st November 2005
