🧑‍🌾 Three essential loves 3: non-theoretical people

The Book of TREE 1.39

I’ve written about cosmic love and self love. Now it’s time for the rubber-meets-the-road love: loving your neighbour.

Who are your neighbours?
They are all the non-theoretical people you have contact with.
So
Declaring, ’I just love all people!’ is not loving your neighbour.
Kindly helping out that annoying person two desks over is loving your neighbour.

Loving your neighbour is doing actual good for actual people. This always means the interactions (and inconveniences) with individuals. Sometimes you have an opportunity to love groups of neighbours. You may, on occasion, get to love whole categories or communities of neighbours. But always it comes back to how you treat the individual people whose lives intersect with yours,
especially the people outside your friend group,
especially the people in other social strata,
especially the people you don’t like.

Loving your neighbour is a choice
and a feeling.

When your cosmic love is strong, you’ll see the unbreakable connection between you and all other life.

When your self love is healthy, you can give and even sacrifice freely to meet other’s needs.

When it’s all humming along in balance, joy, not duty, is the engine of loving your neighbour. You’ll have the feeling of ‘I get to do this!’ Because loving your neighbour is a natural consequence of good cosmic and self love.

Is it always in balance?
Heck no.
I’ve loved my neighbour through gritted teeth.
I’ve failed to love my neighbour at all.
But sometimes it fits together
and I do the good thing
and I see how beautiful this world is.

How, specifically, can you love one of your neighbours today?

Grow slowly
Jeff