Love . . . and Express Your Love in All Possible Ways
To be benevolent is to love the other person. (Analects 12.22)
Benevolence, in its simplest form, is loving another person. But it is not as simple as it sounds. Most parents will not doubt for a moment that they love their children. They take care of their children, provide them with the best life has to offer, devote their time and energy to raising them well. Every parent makes some kind of sacrifice for his or her children. But what happens when the child defies or rebels? Can you still say “I love you” to a child who screams “I hate you?”
Benevolence requires us to love others even when we are disappointed or angry with them. We will discuss how benevolence can help us control our anger in the next section, but for now, let us concentrate on how we could still love a child who has broken our heart. The key is how to see the child in a benevolent way. It is easy to love a sweet baby who is cute and affectionate. But what happens when your child is doing everything you hate. He may be rude, defiant, and so different from the younger child you loved so much. Do you only hate what he did, or are you starting to hate him? It is a scary thought, but it is something we will have to deal with before we can truly understand what benevolence is all about.
Many parenting experts have advised parents to separate a child’s actions from the child. I found this the most difficult part of parenting, and it took me a long time to discover that the only way we can be benevolent even when we are really angry with our children is to put on our “Benevolent Glasses.” Through this pair of glasses, you will see your child as he or she really is . . . a two-and-one-half-year-old who hates you because he hates the way you boss him around but still loves everything else about you; a twelve-year-old who acts like twenty-one because she is scared, confused, and thinks that you won’t allow her to find her own identity. Only by seeing with benevolence can we act with benevolence, and only by acting with benevolence can we truly raise a child who will be happy and successful in life.
In understanding our love for another, we need to, again, look into our intention. Confucius stressed “Sincerity of Intention.” Do we love our son only if he is hardworking? Do we love our daughter only if she is obedient? Or do we love our children unconditionally? This brings us back to our previous discussion on the goal of self-serving rewards and recognition versus care for our child’s long-term well-being.
If there is one thing that we absolutely cannot do without in successful parenting, it is unconditional love. A child will need to know that you love him even if he has done something bad. It is dangerous to even suggest to a child that you will take your love away if he does something wrong. A child needs to know that you will love him no matter what happens. Your love for your child should not fade even if he has committed the worst crime on earth. You definitely do not approve of his wrongdoing, but that does not mean you should love him less. His friends, his lover, or his spouse may stop loving him, but never his mother and father.
A child who thinks his parents do not love him can never learn how to love himself, and loving ourselves is the foundation for a happy and well-balanced person. As long as children know that their parents love them unconditionally, they will return the love in one way or another. This leads us to another important point . . . do your children feel that you love them?
Show and Express Your Love in Every Way Possible
No human can resist the genuine love of another human being, whether that person is a parent, a lover, a friend, a neighbor, or even someone he once considered an enemy. In the same way, if there ever comes a time that you doubt your love for your child who has broken your heart, remember that he or she was the same loving child who once whispered in your ears “I love you, mommy” or “I love you, daddy.” Give him or her a chance to say it again.
Though benevolence will inspire us to act with love and respect, we may still feel like there is one factor that keeps us from “doing it right.” That is the anger factor. For people like me who entered parenthood with “short fused” stamped on their forehead and “devoted parent” imprinted on their heart, parenting is bound to be an uphill race. Anger and parental devotion just do not mix; one of them will have to go if you want to save yourself from the pain and agony in parenting. My decision was to keep the devotion and try to conquer anger.
Two Opposing Forces
Benevolence inspires us to love and be kind to another person. Anger makes us want to do just the opposite. It makes us want to hurt the other person because the other person has caused us pain.
To manage anger with benevolence is to learn how to eliminate the desire to hurt another person. We can do this by cultivating benevolence in our heart. The calmness will then come from within and not just from diverting our focus to things outside of us, like music or a cool drink. The focus will need to be on our benevolent thoughts which will help us to find a way to love the other person who has irritated us. In confronting our children and their disobedience, benevolence will prompt us to understand and help them; instead of doing all we can to hurt them with words or actions. Consider this example.
Karen was the mother of an eleven-year-old boy, Charles. She had always wanted to give her best to her child and to become an excellent parent. She studied parenting books, attended parenting classes, consulted parenting experts and even went out of her way to learn yoga so that she could slow down and be more relaxed with life. She followed everything that she studied to the best she could and was happy to see that she was making good progress.
When Karen told Charles that she had programmed the computer to restrict and monitor his Internet use at home, Charles slammed the door in her face. When Karen demanded that he come out and apologize, he shouted, “get lost” from the other side of the door. This was totally unexpected, and Karen found herself holding her breath outside Charles’s room, with enough dynamite to blow the door open.
For a second, Karen thought she could handle this. She had learned from her parenting books about how to handle such a situation. She remembered exactly what some of her parenting books had taught her to do—take a time-out, go for a walk, take a shower, listen to some soft music, practice slow and deep breathing, stay calm, don’t reward your children’s misbehavior with your anger, think of a time you had good control, let your anger out slowly by talking with your child. . . . All these things seemed to have helped in the past but Karen’s hands were still shaking and her heart started beating faster and faster.
In the intensity of her anger, Karen started to think that maybe shouting back at her son might soothe things a bit for her, but all the books said that she should not react to her child’s bad mouthing. All the books said it was nothing personal, that the child just did not like what she had done, not who she was. But still, Karen could not stop playing and replaying the terrible scene in her mind. Maybe she should just “get lost,” take the easy way out, and let Charles ruin his life with all the evil temptations on the Internet. Karen felt her anger surging inside her until she finally said to herself, “Enough is enough. I am who I am.” It is so much easier to react to her anger and just do what feels good in that moment.
No matter how much Karen loved her son, it was a great challenge for her to keep cool under these circumstances. Telling herself that she loved her son was not