Difficult people train us to love. Really.

Difficult people train us to love. Really.

There are many types of difficult people. The most difficult people are those we are least prepared to deal with or understand. Often, these are people we don’t know, and may have emerged from part of the world, or a time in history where cultures and circumstances are different from what we have been used to.

For some of them, what is right, wrong, beautiful, sexy, sweet, sour, yummy, yucky may be different from ours. Sometimes, they would even force their definition on us, exacerbating the difference and making us, and our own definitions small or inferior to theirs. As such, they can be arrogant, uncomfortable, even offensive. These are the people who are overly able compared to us. We find them difficult because we feel put down by them. Our self-esteem is affected when they put us down and make us feel small.

Likewise, they can be weak, needy or sick, deaf and dumb, neurotic or psychotic, morally reprehensible, the emotionally needy, drug dependents, alcoholics, lazy or poor, gasatador, estapador, liars, cheats, or the no-reads and no-writes of the world. Again, compared to us, these are the lesser able people in the world. Sometimes, they are people who have selfish desires for us. We often scoff at them, or want little to do with them because of the energies we perceive they remove from us, our precious time they waste, or the harm we think they bring. We see ourselves as better people than they are. When we put them down, we sometimes do it to boost our self-esteem.

Both types of difficult people become more difficult when they happen to be a parent, a brother or sister, or a close family member. This makes us often obliged to deal with them while we would rather avoid them. Having to deal with these attributes day in and out tires us, and their familiarity to us breeds a contempt and callousness towards them. What makes it even more uncomforting for us to face these different, difficult people, is when we were raised in a social class or community where we were expected to mingle only with people considered appropriate. We are sometimes admonished to build our pride and self-esteem by acting negatively, either bucking them or avoiding them.

Often, our parents or those who raised us are the inadvertent and unknowing culprit. Sometimes, they are the overly able people who put us down, or are the lesser able people we feel contempt for . We are especially harsh towards them because we feel that they, of all people, should be trusted by us. We feel rejected, used and hurt by these people we are supposed to trust. .Broken trust exacerbates the contempt against them. The irony is that when we react negatively towards both these difficult people, it betrays our LACK of self-esteem.

Often, in our current relationships, love is premised on meeting material needs, such as money, sexual desire, professional advancement and the satisfaction of emotional needs and wants, even moral arrogance. The greater irony is that real love can only grow on the good soil that is proper self-esteem. Without it, we become slaves of our self-esteem issues, and victims of those who threaten or want to harm us - for they also suffer from the same lack of self-esteem. Life then becomes simply a game of meeting these wants and desires. When we cant play this game of life well, we despair and get depressed.

Real Love is the ideal antidote to self esteem issues. It allows us to cross over our material needs and experience others properly in he light of caring and compassion, warmth and openness. It takes away pretense and conditions, and makes us patient and kind, sincere and real. This love transcends the material considerations, enabling us to accept, and empower others.

Real love is the seedbed for fruitful, long term relationships and partnerships. This is especially important for building families and raising children, for we want our spouses, friends and families to feel secure in our love, and feel the warmth and acceptance that will help make them great people, and real lovers, to others. Of course, the material and emotional needs are met, but we have to go beyond just meeting these needs and desires.

Real love is God’s love. He has the ultimate capacity for loving even the most difficult people. He loves us even more than our mothers, no matter how difficult we may have been, or are. He has given us all the chances in the world and never saw us for our ability, material possessions or emotional needs, even our past. Real love begins with our own realization that God loves us deeply, no matter who we are. It is knowing this love that we feel confident, and our self-esteem is built. He loves us for us. No other person can affect or malign this wellspring of self-esteem, security and confidence his love brings.

Not everybody can give real love. Some people have a bigger capacity for it, many don’t. It requires maturity, training, exposure and realization deep inside us. Real love requires commitment and decision, for loving difficult people may often require the best of us, and our highest self-esteem, confidence and inner strength to see beyond the difficulty of people. God encourages us to love like that. Without conditions. To love them for them, in the same way he loves us for us.

SO when we come across these difficult people, we no longer judge them as overly able or lesser able, for ability is not the real source of worth or self-esteem. In fact, we don’t even need to judge, for even the act of judging affects us, and betrays our low self-esteem.

What we need to do is use the love to make these difficult people grow into real lovers themselves: confident, empowered with the proper self-esteem to enable them to love others as well.

All we have to do is love. Really.