Chapter 23 focus

An important feature of overdependence is that it has nothing to do with mental maturity.Those who are overly dependent only care about personal nourishment, only care about their own feelings, and only want to live a rich and fulfilling life for themselves.They crave pleasure and enjoyment, but are not concerned with mental maturity.Nor can they tolerate growing pains, loneliness, and loneliness.People who are overly dependent never care about the maturity of others, even the ones they depend on.They are concerned that others will always have their needs met.We often regard excessive dependence as love, and mental maturity and evolution are excluded.Now, let us further distinguish between the nature of love and dependence, in order to clarify the fact that love cannot bring any nourishment and any kind of "spiritual concentration" without concern for mental maturity, so it is not love in the true sense of the word .

The objects of love are not only people, but also inanimate things or activities.For example, "he loves money," "he loves power," "he loves gardening," "he loves golf," and so on.A person who works seventy or eighty hours a week and concentrates on acquiring money or power may achieve something, but the accumulation of money and the consolidation of power do not mean true self-improvement.We can still unanimously accuse a self-made business owner of saying, "He's really a villain, a short-sighted miser." No matter how much "he" loves money and power, no one thinks he has love. The ultimate goal is only wealth and power.The no other end of love is the maturation of the mind, or the advancement of man.

Cultivating a special hobby is an effective means of self-nourishment.To learn self-respect and self-love, you need self-nourishing.We also need to provide nourishment for the "self" outside the mind. For example, we must cherish the body and take good care of it; we must have sufficient food and provide ourselves with a warm shelter; Not always busy.As the saying goes: "A sage also needs sleep." Reasonable and healthy hobbies are a necessary means of cultivating self-esteem and self-love.Of course, a hobby or interest in itself, if it becomes the whole goal of self-improvement, will deviate from the essence of life.Certain games or entertainment are popular because they can replace the pain of self-improvement.

Take golf as an example.We may notice that some elderly people set their highest goal for the rest of their lives to improve their golf skills. What they think about most every day is how to finish a round with fewer strokes. field ball.They want to "offset" the fact that they are not improving as a person by their athletic achievements.If they knew self-respect and self-love, they would not delude themselves and substitute low, superficial goals for self-improvement. On the other hand, it is not necessarily impossible to achieve the goal of love through power and money.Some people devote themselves to political career, just want to use their political influence to seek happiness for all mankind.Some people work hard to make money, just to support their children to go to college, or to buy more freedom and time with money, so that they can have the conditions to study and think, to promote the maturity of mind.For them, money and power are not the ultimate goals, and human beings are the objects of their love.

"Love" is an abstract word. Sometimes, the meaning of love is too general, so it is often misused and prevents us from getting in touch with the true meaning of love. I don't expect everyone to understand what love is for, but quite a few people clearly misuse "love".They are accustomed to using "love" to describe the things they care about, but rarely consider the nature of love, and it is difficult to properly distinguish wisdom from stupidity, goodness from evil, nobleness from baseness. This is a dangerous and terrifying fact. Taking the definition of love in this chapter as an example, the real object of our love should be human beings.Only the human mind has the capacity to grow and progress.

When we lose the ability to love, we may divert our emotions to other things, thinking that true love can still be cultivated.For example, some people devote all their emotions to a pet puppy, treat it as a real family member, feed it the best food, comb and bathe it frequently, get close to it every day, hug it, teach it Play various games.When the puppy suddenly becomes ill, we may drop everything and take it to the veterinarian.The puppy suddenly lost or died, and the whole family felt extremely sad, as if they were bereaved.For those lonely and lonely people, pets are like their life, everything in life. In their view, what is it if it is not love?However, the relationship between people is different from the relationship between people and pets.First of all, our communication with pets is quite limited. We don't know what they are thinking every day, but we wishful thinking, project our thoughts and feelings onto pets, and even lead them to be confidants in life.In fact, this is just our subjective wish.Second, the reason we love pets is that they behave well and let them be manipulated.If pets are disobedient, destroy furniture, defecate freely, or even bite us a few times, we may abandon them and even drive them out of the house.Also, to improve the minds of pets, we can only send them to pet training schools.If someone gets along with us, the situation is completely different. We must allow him or her to have independent thinking and will, because one of the essences of true love is to hope that the other person has an independent personality.Last but not least, we keep pets in the hope that they will never grow up and stay with us obediently.What we value is the dependence of pets on us.

Many people don't know how to love others, they "love" only "pets".During World War II, many American soldiers married "war brides" from Germany, Italy, and Japan.This kind of foreign marriage seems very romantic, but the man and woman are actually strangers, and there is little real communication.When the bride learns to speak English, her marriage begins to fall apart.Their military husbands can no longer project their thoughts, feelings, and desires onto their wives—like “pets”—and no longer feel that their wives are connected to them.After the wife learned English and expressed her feelings, the husband realized that there may be a big gap between their views and opinions, and their goals in life are completely different.Of course, there are also some people who slowly cultivate their feelings just from this moment.For most people, this situation means the loss of feelings and the end of marriage.Women who pursue freedom and independence cannot accept the supremacy of men, and communicate with them with the attitude of treating pets, and talk to them in the way of calling pets.They feel that men treat them like pets and don't respect them as human beings.

It is also a sad thing for a mother to love her child forever as a baby.When the children grow up and no longer accept their morbid doting, they suffer a great blow.Before the child is two years old, they can still be regarded as ideal mothers, and they take good care of the child, but overnight, great changes will take place.When the child's self-will begins to mature, become willful and disobedient, or get closer to others, or even try to get rid of the shackles of the mother, the mother's love will end.They no longer focus on their children, and even develop resentment and disgust.They may be tempted to conceive again and have another child, a new pet.If a new child is born, a new round of vicious circle will start.They may also babysit neighbors' babies while neglecting their own.Losing the mother's love, the child is lonely and sad, but the mother turns a blind eye and "focuses" on other people's children.In this case, when the child grows up, he may suffer from severe depression or form a "negative dependent personality".Love for a baby, love for a pet, and love for a submissive companion are mostly paternal or maternal instincts, much like falling in love, without much effort.This kind of love is not an act chosen by the will, and it is not helpful to the maturity of the mind, so it is not love in the true sense.Of course, such emotions are conducive to the establishment of intimate relationships, and can even become the basis of true love.But it takes a lot more than that to have a sound, perfect marriage, to raise healthy, mature children, and to achieve the advancement of the entire human psyche.

The nourishment of true love is far more complicated than the general sense of nurturing.The process of nurturing mental maturity is different from being guided by biological instinct.Take the mother who refuses to let her child take the school bus. She insists on driving her child to and from school, and would rather sacrifice a lot of time for it. This is certainly a way of emotional nourishment, but it only hinders the child's mental maturity.Similar situations also include: some mothers prefer individual children to the extent that they do not hide it; Toys or clothes in the house; some parents respond to all requests of their children... In fact, true love is not simply giving, but also includes appropriate rejection, timely praise, appropriate criticism, appropriate argument, Necessary encouragement, gentle comfort, and effective urging.Parents should be respected leaders, commanders, telling their children what to do and what not to do.Rational judgment, not gut feeling, requires careful thought, careful planning, and even painful decisions.