All You Need is Love

A multitude of things have been going on in the world, in my schooling, and in my personal life that have caused me to reflect on the worth of individuals and the need of everyone to be loved.

I was speaking with a loved one recently, and he shared with me that he had never really felt loved. It broke my heart to hear this, as it was someone I had loved as long as I could remember, and I want nothing more than for him to know he is loved. Unfortunately, this has only been one of many similar instances recently.

A few weeks ago in my cognitive therapy class, we were talking about the core beliefs that we hold. Dr. N gave each of us a sheet of paper with blanks after the phrases “I am,” “Others are,” and “The world is.” Each of us was to fill-in-the-blank after each of those phrases reflecting our personal beliefs.

I was shocked as we began to discuss it because most of my classmates reflected beliefs of themselves as failures. They felt that to be “successful,” they had to achieve certain benchmarks in life (e.g. successfully complete their MSW). As more comments were made reflecting the same kind of thoughts, I felt the need to raise my hand to share what I had written.

While I do have insecurities, I also feel confidence in my abilities. I wrote of myself, “I am a valuable and talented person.” About others, I wrote, “Others are valuable by virtue of being a person and a child of God.” I brought up the point that, as therapists, we one, need to believe that each person is a valuable human being without having to meet certain conditions, and furthermore, we ought to help our clients see that their value or success as a person is not attached to some tangible benchmark they (or someone else) place on themselves.

The world tells us that to be somebody of value or success or somebody worth being loved, we have to achieve X amount of education, earn X amount of dollars, or participate in X types or amounts of activities.

Over and over again, the message I am getting from many people is that they don’t feel loved and don’t feel they deserve to be loved. I ache to hear this. I believe that each and every one of us is a child of God. Furthermore, I believe that He loves each of us more than any of us could ever comprehend in this mortality.