Love is a Double Edged Sword. Wise Usage Recommended

Is The Very Act of Helping People Selfish?

I’m a great believer in love, but you have to be aware it is a double-edged sword and rarely as ‘pure’ as it seems.

Well not in my experience anyway. More than once bitten, twice shy you could say.

You might say I have had a dose of realism in the last few months.

The only pure love I have felt is the love from a cherished pet (and for and from my children - better add that in there haha).

But…

A lot of my daily actions are based on my love of helping people.

It is not necessarily about love of these people, but I can empathize as I know what it is like to feel utterly alone and helpless and having no-one there to help. And having a spark of hope would have helped me immensely in some low times.

Steemit, since I have been here actually has been that spark, even if sometimes the people haven't been so savory, but I'll save that story for tomorrow when I answer the @Ecotrain Question of the week: What does it mean to own your emotions?

So I strive to be that person who helps and supports through the darkness, by giving hope.

But I am only human, and there only so much of that I can take and do before it consumes me too if I’m not careful.

That is the major reason I have to stay away from the news.

However, I also like the way that helping people makes me feel, it makes me feel useful and that I have done something small that might have made a difference, at least to one person.

Therefore by helping people, I am being selfish as it makes me feel better also.

I am under no illusions on this, but I like to be happy and I like helping, so it ends up win win for everyone whatever the reasons behind that.

Life doesn’t have to be about the 9 to 5 and living for the weekends, but about living from moment to moment and on your own terms, that is what I try to live and ‘teach’.

I also know the hard way that even though you see someone’s potential, it doesn’t mean that they ever will.

You can show them the way, but you can’t make them drink.

The Starfish Story

I truly believe in making a difference to one person at a time, you can change someone’s whole world that way.

It is why I love the Starfish Story so much.

Source

The Down Side of Love

But just as easily you can also end up wrecking someone else’s world and make them homeless and end up damaging yourself…

Because when love is involved it takes so much more out of you, it blinds you to what is obvious to anyone looking in.

Well in my case the person I saw lots of potential in was my husband.

He was intelligent and absolutely no reason not to succeed, except he didn’t want to.

Succeed in this case didn’t mean stacks of money, but just not live on welfare anymore, struggling from payment to payment.

I tried for years to find opportunities we both could do, but they didn’t interest him for long, even though we did quite well with ghostwriting.

Until all the responsibility fell on me, but we had to do things ’together’ because we were were married and that’s what married people do.

The kids came along and I ran of time to be able to do this venture alone.

He was on welfare because of a long term back issue that can never be rectified. He was in pain everyday and various
concoctions of painkillers that didn’t work unless alcohol was added to the mix and even then it didn’t really work, just added fuel to his misery.

Often it meant that there were days that he couldn’t get out of bed and it would get him down. Understandably.

But did even ideas of talking out his stories (of which there were plenty)into a dictaphone, oops showing age, I mean smart phone, met with roadblocks every time.

So 13 years later, I finally realized that there was no helping him and if I stayed where I was, I would be in the gutter to.

We were just making each other miserable.

Of course, there was a little more to it than this, but we had to part ways.

Love had blinded me to the toxicity and only when my energy was almost null did I finally take notice.

Where it Has Left Me...

So forgive me, as I have to remain aloof a little, as my energy supplies are still replenishing.

I have to stand back still as if I get close to people, I can feel a bit of what they are going through.

I won’t pretend that is fully what they are going through, as I have no way of knowing what other people are feeling, as no-one does except themselves.

But I need my resources for me for a little while more.

In the meantime though I can help from afar.

My mini-mission is to make a million and give it away - that’s still in progress, though Steemit is an awesome place to do this. I have given $1000s away already in forms of delegations, donations and even as prizes to various contests I’ve run, depending on the exchange rate, it is impossible to put a figure on.

Even as votes, so we all do a little of this anyway, without trying too hard, so we can all get to feel good :)

And I will continue trying to convince people to be themselves, live life on their own terms and let their masks slip, as finding out someone is actually supposedly working as a watcher who gets called out on missions to watch ‘terrorists’ by text that mysteriously disappear after 5 seconds, halfway through a marriage isn’t fun!

(Told you he was good at stories)

Those of you who know my story, know that I was no angel either (I told it in my post yesterday)

Live and learn. That is what life is about

And hopefully love again one day.

(I must be a glutton for punishment)

That is my design

I nabbed that line from Hannibal

With <3 @HopeHuggs