To Heal Your Hurting Heart, Choose To Love Again

So, you’ve been let down. Someone betrayed you.

Maybe your boyfriend cheated on you, maybe you lost your job, or maybe things are generally going in a direction you don’t quite like. Maybe you feel miserable, maybe you feel depressed, or maybe you feel angry and bewildered and slighted.

If you’re like the billions of other humans on the planet, you may feel an impulse to take matters into your own hands – to wrong the one who wronged you, to cheat on the one who cheated on you, to slander your boss or to just lose yourself in an oblivion of your greatest vice.

But before you decide to abandon yourself to the vortex of negativity, choose kindness.

First, consciously decide to be kind to yourself. Realize that you are hurt because you trusted someone, because you let someone in. And that is not something to regret, but to be proud of. To constantly choose to trust others and allow them into our lives is a sign of courage and strength, no matter how many times they may let us down. Shine the light of love and positivity and forgiveness onto your own fragile, vulnerable heart. Because beneath the revenge-seeking exterior lies a hurt soul. And the only way to heal a hurting heart is to envelop it in love.

The antidote to your pain is love and kindness

Firstly to yourself, so that your actions will stem from a place of sincerity, and not from a bitter heart that is force-feeding others something it does not truly feel. The most healing form of kindness is one that is exuded through you simply because you are overflowing with it.

Likewise, the remedy for the person who hurt you is kindness. Because only a hurt person can hurt people. And by poking at their wounds by any act of anger, you are only perpetuating the cold that has seeped into their heart.

In fact, when someone hurts you, instead of being angry towards them, realize that they are themselves deeply afflicted, and you will feel sympathy for them. And like any person who is suffering, we must try to uplift them, not defile them further.

“…Seek always to do that which is right and noble. Enrich the poor, raise the fallen, comfort the sorrowful, bring healing to the sick, reassure the fearful, rescue the oppressed, bring hope to the hopeless, shelter the destitute!” – Abdul-Baha, Paris Talks 

This is how we change ourselves, and this is how we change the world: by always choosing kindness.