Love leads us into mystery where no one can say
what comes next, or how, or why. -- Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
Micro
Moments of Love
--by Barbara
Frederickson, syndicated from awakin.org, Dec 13,
2014
ServiceSpace.org is an incubator of gift-economy projects
that is run by inspired volunteers. Its mission statement reads: "We believe in
the inherent goodness of others and aim to ignite that spirit of service.
Through our small, collective acts, we hope to transform ourselves and the
world."
It’s
time to upgrade our view of love. First and foremost, love is an emotion, a
momentary state that arises to infuse your mind and body alike.
Love,
like all emotions, surfaces like a distinct and fast-moving weather pattern, a
subtle and ever-shifting force. As for all positive emotions, the inner feeling
love brings you is inherently and exquisitely pleasant -- it feels
extraordinarily good, the way a long, cool drink of water feels when you’re
parched on a hot day. Yet far beyond feeling good, a micro-moment of love, like
other positive emotions, literally changes your mind. It expands your awareness
of your surroundings, even your sense of self. The boundaries between you and
not-you -- what lies beyond your skin -- relax and become more permeable. While
infused with love you see fewer distinctions between you and others. Indeed,
your ability to see others -- really see them, wholeheartedly -- springs open.
Love can even give you a palpable sense of oneness and connection, a
transcendence that makes you feel part of something far larger than yourself.
Love, like all emotions, surfaces like a distinct and fast-moving weather
pattern, a subtle and ever-shifting force. And the new take on love that I want
to share with you is this: Love blossoms virtually any time two or more people
-- even strangers -- connect over a shared positive emotion, be it mild or
strong.
Odds
are, if you were raised in a Western culture, you think of emotions as largely
private events. You locate them within a person’s boundaries, confined within
their mind and skin. When conversing about emotions, your use of singular
possessive adjectives betrays this point of view. You refer to ‘my anxiety,’
‘his anger,’ or ‘her interest.’ Following this logic, love would seem to belong
to the person who feels it. Defining love as positivity resonance challenges
this view. Love unfolds and reverberates between and among people -- within
interpersonal transactions -- and thereby belong to all parties involved, and to
the metaphorical connective tissue that binds them together, albeit temporarily.
More than any other positive emotion, then, love belongs not to one person, but
to pairs or groups of people. It resides within connections.
Perhaps
most challenging of all, love is neither lasting nor unconditional. The radical
shift we need to make is this: Love, as your body experiences it, is a
micro-moment of connection shared with another. And decades of research now
shows that love, seen as these micro-moments of positive connection, fortifies
the connection between your brain and your heart and makes you healthier. It can
seem surprising that an experience that lasts just a micro-moment can have any
lasting effect on your health and longevity. Yet there’s an important feedback
loop at work here, an upward spiral between your social and your physical
well-being. That is, your micro-moments of love not only make you healthier, but
being healthier also builds your capacity for love. Little by little, love
begets love by improving your health. And health begets health by improving your
capacity for love.
--Barbara
Frederickson, in Love 2.0
Be The Change: Challenge the
conventional, romantic notion of love today by feeling love towards a stranger.
How does this connection expand your sense of self?
