Letter to an unloved one

Dear Unloved One,

I am the harbinger of bad news. I accept this responsibility and hope that you will be able to handle what I have to tell you. For years, deep down inside yourself, you have felt seriously unloved, abandoned, forgotten, ignored, helpless and worse, simply unworthy of anyone’s love. I am writing to you today to confirm your very worst fears: it is true you are unloved. Somehow I know this does not come as a shock to you and that perhaps you feel relieved to finally hear someone on the outside declaring what you have always known: you are definitely unloved. I rather suspect that this news will not cause any more tears. You have cried so hard and long inside yourself that saying what is self evident will release some of the tension within. You no longer need to keep up the pretense of happiness and well being; you can finally confess to being downright miserable, lonely, misunderstood and completely without anyone to defend your interests. I know you have made many attempts throughout your life to assuage this thirst you have for love. I know also that for the most part they have gone awry.

I am here to tell you to simply stop trying. Give up. Stop. It is no use. You are unloved and that is all there is to it. We both know who is to blame - really - but you can cease looking in that direction. Nothing is going to change. It is like that. They did their best and they failed. You have failed too but we are not talking your own actions. We are talking about your inner state of “unlovedness”. We know how those arrows of hate, envy, jealously, anger fly in all directions; how they pierce your sensitive heart and how they make you wish you had never been born. You could have chosen to stay in the womb and die but no, you chose to take the risk of being born and look where it has landed you. You cannot avoid the pain of the world. There must be a few good reasons for your hanging around despite all the odds to walk your way through this world of sorrows.

As unloved as you are I want you to rack your brains and come up with at least one really good reason for persevering. Is it possible that you are still holding on to that ancient dream of the perfect love? Unconditional love. Ah how sweet that rings in my ears. How it makes me dream and wish and hope and go on living. I would give my all to feel this love infusing me, holding me, lighting my heart, shining in my eyes. You too have this dream deep down inside you but it is not formulated yet. It has not found words that you can hear. You seem to be very attached to your unloved self and clearly you would be completely at sea without it. Well take my advice; hold on to that unloved self as long as possible. You will eventually die and it will be all over and no one will be any the worse off for your having clung to your poor, poor, poor self all your life. Better the self you know than taking any unnecessary risks with real love. Why this persistence with expecting human love to be unconditional? Wherever did you get that idea from? You dreamed it, right? It is such a beautiful dream. I have had it too. It is my favorite dream. In it I feel accepted, included, wanted even……even……adored. Sometimes my dream comes with applause from the thousands; sometimes it comes with an adoring gaze that leaves me feeling happy beyond measure. Then I wake up.

I am writing to tell you to wake up. It is time to stop dreaming. Are you going to waste more of this precious gift of life whopped into you on arrival and whopped out of you on departure? If you have to, reassure your unloved self that he may remain unloved for as long as he likes. It is none of your business what he chooses to do in the long run. However I would beg you to tempt - yes just tempt - experimenting with the love of a flower that gives its beauty and asks nothing in return. Yes some flowers come with poison, others with thorns and some come unadorned. They, like us, are a part of nature so their undemanding love, like a parent’s, is imperfect. Maybe when you can tolerate the idea of imperfect human love you can forgive………yourself……for what you were never able to be in your imagination for those who passed life on to you. It is not so complicated you know. Just admit to not knowing anything about unconditional love except in dreams and then get on with trying improve the state of conditional love that we live in here on this planet.

Someone may have said something to you about Universal love or God’s love or some such appellation. I confirm in writing that yes, this is definitely very helpful but I would like to warn you, in case you are looking for a soft option, that actually it is hard work at the beginning. No magic wands. Put the magic wand in your dream pack. That is where I keep mine. By the way you may have noticed that there are so many people living by the law of the magic wand that life can feel like a Harry Potter repeat much of the time. So for what it is worth you are not alone.

You know I would not be writing this to you if I didn’t think you could take it. From a scientific point of view love is an interesting thing to practice. It impacts your physiology you know. It does get around the tricky bit about God and for a beginner in the art of conditional loving it is a good place to start.

Do nothing except direct your attention to the area around the heart and begin to breath deeply through your whole body. Make your outgoing breath slightly longer than your incoming breath. Think about a happy, delightful, funny moment and stay with it for a minute or so. Do this little exercise as often as you like and see how it affects your capacity to feel better about yourself and the world. Curiously enough when you start to feel better inside yourself you will start to feel love around you and even more curious the conditions that usually come with love start to dwindle - become less important. When you become aware of the conditions attached to love between human beings you will become a little more forgiving of the shortfalls. Slowly you will feel a flowering in your heart of hearts, in a still place that cannot be daunted by the failings of the world. It is there that you find unconditional love. In that secret place that has always been there and which will never be lost or taken away. But it is a journey and while your unloved self dominates the scene it seems like a monumental task to set out on that journey.

I sincerely wish you well and hope that you find the place within you to forgive me for writing to you in this way. May these words point you in the right direction.

Faithfully yours

Your better self.