Heart wide open, arms… sometimes closed
A 2017 study from UC Berkeley identified 27 different emotions we humans can experience, ranging from admiration to excitement to surprise to anger. When I bring up an emotion like “sadness,” we can all conjure up a memory that makes us feel sad. Our hearts may feel heavy, our shoulders may slump, and we may feel sluggish. Being sad doesn’t feel great. On the opposite end of the spectrum, when I say “joy,” we all have memories of feeling joyous. Our bodies feel light and warm, and it’s nearly impossible to stop the corners of your mouth from creeping up into a smile. When I think of my most joyous memories, I can almost feel butterflies in my stomach. Emotions have incredibly different effects on our bodies.
I don’t need to link you studies on how lingering in heavy, stressful emotions can impact our health. From blood pressure to heart health to muscle tension, our bodies and minds feel better when we’re able to center ourselves around love. As the Buddha said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
This doesn’t mean emotions like anger, sadness, fear, and disgust don’t serve a purpose in our lives. Anger can motivate us to make a change for the better. Sadness can help us reflect on actions we regret and ways we’d like to change. Disgust can serve as a friendly reminder to clean out our fridge more frequently. These “negative” emotions are important, but there’s a lot of benefit in finding ways to process these emotions and move on from them. I’d also be doing a disservice if I didn’t call out the systemic, generational, or biological factors that make escaping these heavier emotions difficult. I’m not here to tell anyone how to feel, and I’ve already written an article on how operating from a place of love makes me a better person. Today, I’d like to write about love’s prickly, grey, difficult limits.
If you loan a friend $200 and they never pay you back, one can surely understand the perspective of not wanting to loan them money again in the future. Similarly, If I hand my two-year-old a permanent marker and he colors all over the walls with it, it’s safe to say I won’t be giving him another marker anytime soon. Withholding markers doesn’t mean I don’t love and forgive my son (though he, in his wild toddler mind, may see it as the ultimate act of betrayal); it just means I don’t want to repaint my walls for the fourth time. Not giving my friend another loan doesn’t mean I think they’re a crummy person; I just need to prioritize my own family and wellbeing. By taking these actions, I’m setting myself up for more “positive” emotions in the long-run.
Setting limits on what and who I allow in my life may feel unkind to others, but, in many ways, it’s the ultimate act of kindness to myself. If I don’t stand up for myself and advocate for my own wellbeing, who will? But standing up for myself isn’t always black-and-white. There is a difference between giving friends loans when you have a bank account overflowing with extra money versus when you’re struggling to pay rent. Just like there is a difference between letting someone constantly vent their frustrations towards you when you have the capacity to hold space versus when the interaction will drain you emotionally for days on end. Sacrificing nights of sleep to keep a newborn fed and alive is very different than sacrificing my free-time to cover for my co-worker for the 700th time. Only you can decide where your limit is and what constitutes abandoning yourself.
I struggle with this. A lot of us struggle with this. If you grew up in an environment where you felt you had to take care of the adults around you, you likely learned to abandon yourself very early on. Modern psychology will refer to this as “codependency,” and there are plenty of good books out there on the subject. The ultimate goal of recovering from codependency is to work towards interdependent relationships, where your own needs are just as important as those around you. When I tell a friend I can’t help them move this weekend because I need to prioritize my own responsibilities, I’m practicing interdependence (and maybe I’ll offer to come by at a later time and help them unpack). When I don’t make small talk at the coffee drive-thru window because I don’t enjoy it, I’m practicing interdependence (especially if I do so kindly and recognize I’m not responsible for managing the potential disappointment of other people). When I see someone else taking on all the responsibility in their relationships and seemingly abandoning themselves, I practice interdependence by letting them live their own life, as painful as that is for me to do sometimes. If we’re close, I may share my perspective, but I need to trust they know their own limits and their own life better than me.
This is why I referred to this article as being about love’s prickly, messy, blurry, hard-to-navigate limits. It goes against much of what we’ve been taught. Especially if you’re a woman or a mother, self-sacrifice has been practically baked into your DNA. “If they see how much I’m doing for them and how much I love them, maybe they’ll repay me?” Oof. I’ve said that before. Maybe I still say that sometimes. But does that phrase not also apply to myself? If I see how much I’m doing for others, when will it sink in that I could be doing the same things for myself? The call is coming from inside the house.
Saving people from the consequences of their own actions isn’t loving. Rescuing people to the point that you are harming yourself isn’t loving. Enduring abuse, unkind words, or mistreatment to appease someone else isn’t loving. Allowing someone to continue to harm others because you want to demonstrate love to those who cause pain isn’t loving.
Love isn’t open access without limits. Love isn’t dimming your shine so someone else can feel less intimidated by your brightness. Love isn’t self-sacrifice by a thousand cuts.
To me, love is knowing that harmful actions come from the heaviest of those 27 human emotions — fear and sadness. Love is feeling anger and then letting it go. Love is knowing that I’ve undoubtedly done things to hurt people, and I know no one is purely good or purely bad. Love is saying “I wish you well” while also saying “I need to do what is best for me.” Love sometimes means keeping someone at arm’s distance, especially if it’s to prevent further harm. You can love deeply and still say no to people. I will always strive for an open heart, but — in order for me to love myself — I will sometimes have to keep my arms closed; it’s me, and every younger version of myself that lives inside of me, that needs a hug first.
By dedicating time to think about and put in place these prickly, uncomfortable limits, I am bringing more love into my life. And, as I work to stand up for myself and others, I provide my small, tiny humans with an example of how to navigate the world interdependently. May they never accept an inch less than they deserve.
