[Agape] Loving Your Exes

*Author’s note: The reality is that we all have gone through the pain of people exiting our lives. But, there is growth and healing in loving those who are no longer in our lives. So, whether it is an ex-girlfriend, ex-boyfriend, or even an ex-friend, we can all relate to one another and, together, we can learn to grow from what these people have taught us. If you turn on the radio, you can almost instantaneously hear a song about a bad breakup, or one avenging a bad breakup. In these melodious accounts, we are told to move on, key their cars, slash their tires, find someone new, lose weight, make them jealous, get a new dog, move out of the country, et cetera. Success and happiness is the best revenge, right? But, what comes after revenge? What happens after we have made them jealous? What do we do after we have proven to them that we can do better? Do we really find contentment and wholeness in proving something to our exes? What if we are missing something?If there is a way to love our exes, it should not be by instigating revenge or trying to make them jealous. If we do so, our pursuits in moving on may end up leading us to feel lonelier and more unfulfilled than before. So, how do you love someone who has hurt you? How do you love someone who is no longer in your life?Loving your exes becomes more feasible when you learn to love them for the role they played in your life. We must become comfortable with accepting the fact that not everyone will stay in our lives for the entirety of our lives. Most people may not even stay for a vast majority of our lives. People will come and go throughout the course of our lives. Some will go graciously and others will go leaving a significant hole that you do not know when or how it will ever be filled again. In these instances, you must learn to love those who have left you, those who are no longer a part of your life. You should love them because regardless of the mark they left on your life, they still left a mark. They had a purpose in your life; they taught you, shaped you, and influenced you whether it was through encouragement or through pain. Through someone’s encouragement, you may be reinforced in who you are and you may be inspired to reach your fullest potential. Even still, through someone’s infliction of pain, you may learn of your strength and of your ability to overcome hurt, doubt, and uncertainty. We must learn to be okay with people leaving. We must learn to love however short or long their time was in the course of our lives, because every person has an impact on our lives and every person plays a part in enlightening us of our character and of the power within us.After accepting and admiring the role our exes have played in our lives, we must learn to forgive them through our actions, rather than merely through our words. The reality is that we may not ever get a chance to practice forgiveness through speaking to our exes, through having closure with our exes. So, we must learn the power of forgiveness that comes from within us and shows itself through our actions. Even so, loving our exes may entail forgiving them when we think they do not deserve it. This love, then, calls us to get out of our own heads, to sift through our emotions, and to push pas our own expectations of fairness. All of us have set our own parameters for what we think is fair, what we believe is right, and what we have come to know we deserve. We have set standards that we will not compromise on; we have set expectations for others which we feel entitled to. But, sometimes our judgment of fairness and rightness can inhibit our ability to love others entirely and selflessly. When we are called to love and forgive those who have hurt us, we push past those parameters and expectations and we allow ourselves to grow beyond the limits we have set for ourselves. When we love our exes by forgiving them, we experience a love that is centered, not on the betterment of ourselves, but the betterment of others.But, in loving our exes, we, ourselves, experience a love that binds bitterness and sets us free. Through humbly and selflessly forgiving our exes for the pain they may have caused us, and for accepting the impact they have made on our lives, we experience freedom. When we exert this love, we experience wholeness and healing that we could not have made complete through any means of our own. This freedom is unleashed in us when we begin to transform the way we think of our exes. When we constantly think negatively of our exes, our minds become crammed and our hearts become heavy. But, when we make a simple yet conscious effort to think positively and encouragingly of our exes, we clear our minds and allow this selfless and freeing love to break through the constraints we, ourselves, have put on our hearts. When we shed our negative thoughts of our exes, when we replace bitterness and resentment with gratitude, we create space for freedom to reign in our hearts and in our minds. Then, once this freedom beings to work in our hearts, we will notice a transformation in our actions. In the act of loving our exes, the same love that we show to them begins to break the bonds of bitterness and resentment so that our own lives are changed. It is this radical love that begins to dictate our actions. We see, then, that the radical way in which we love those who have hurt us and left us begins to radically transform our lives.So, start simply, but start with a determination to see this radical love come to fruition. Allow your heart to go through the pain and confusion of loving someone who has hurt you, because once you push through the confusion and the sing, your heart will experience a pure and enticing freedom that it may not have known before. Once you experience the freedom and the humility in loving your exes, you will allow yourself to leap to bounds that may have been unknown to you before so that your heart and mind can exceed your own expectations in order to further reach those around you.

Beyond the Stars and Stripes.

What does freedom mean to you? What does living in freedom truly entail? For us Americans, it is a right protected by our U.S. Constitution; it is a principle near and dear to our hearts; it is something that has been fought for us, and something we are continually fighting to secure. But, for many whose eyes are fixed on “the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,” it embodies more of a privilege than a right. So, what does freedom mean for those who get to call it a right rather than a distant ideal? According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word freedom finds its roots in the Old English language. Freedom denotes the “power of self-determination, state of free will; emancipation from slavery, deliverance”.[1] In the 1570s it denoted “possession of particular privileges.” So, what are these privileges? In his address to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1816, John C. Calhoun gave his own meaning to the word freedom, when he affirmed: “It has been said by some physicians, that life is a forced state. The same may be said of freedom. It requires efforts, it presupposes mental and moral qualities of a higher order to be generally diffused in the society where it exists”.[2]In order to better understand freedom, it will be helpful to examine another derivative of the word, namely the ancient Greek word, “eleutheria” and its influence in ancient and modern philosophical works. In fact, the ancient Greek philosophers associated freedom with this “eleutheria”[3] which is used to personify freedom with the community and the collective. Some other ancient philosophers, though, understood freedom as the independence of the individual. Plato and Aristotle understood freedom as an interior freedom, reaching “plentitude in the freedom of spirit, which not only guarantees man’s independence in relation to the exterior world, but it also gives him the possibility to develop his real character. Freedom [then] has only one limit, but it is inviolable. It derives from the intrinsic laws of the sprit, which are able to provide truth as well as good”.[4] How have we evolved from equating freedom with the collective to the individual? Is it not the act of attributing freedom to the collective wellbeing of humanity that brings us global politics, international business, humanitarianism, and human rights? In the age of globalization, is not the idea of collectivity and global community an imminent one? Surely, then, by attributing freedom to the collective, to the global, the fight for the freedom of others becomes more pertinent.Now, Athenian democracy was not perfect, and it did not always advocate for the collective well-being of its citizens. In fact, it excluded the majority of its citizens from being free citizens, namely women, foreigners, and slaves. Athenian government was limited, rather than truly inclusive and equitable. But that leads us precisely to the point. Freedom is not, nor should it be, solely attributed to the political sphere. In fact, freedom becomes distorted when it is attributed to politics, to the rulers, or to the elite.The various meanings of the word “freedom” then begs the question, “Is freedom relative?” If it is interpreted in the individual sense, it does not do much good for those who do not have it. Alternatively, if it is interpreted in the collective sense, then those who possess freedom are so much more driven to act in such a way as to secure freedom for those who do not have it.So, what does freedom mean for those who have it in relation to those who do not? For those of us who possess the privilege of freedom, should we be so driven to act any differently? Should we be compelled to fight for the freedom of others around the world, as though the violation of their freedom is a violation of our own?For me, the answer is simple. I have been given a privilege that not many others get to have or even get to call a right of theirs. I have freedom. I can defend my freedom. I can rest in knowing that my freedom is being secured, not just by my own actions, but by the actions of others. Knowing that, my answer is simple; it is a responsibility to act. My freedom is relative to the freedom of others around the world. My freedom is jeopardized when a child is taken captive and forced into bonded labor or warfare, or when an individual is sold into human trafficking, or when a human being is silenced or made inferior because of their race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender, or sexual orientation. Enjoying our freedom goes beyond a feeling of mere gratitude; it extends to action, to fighting for the freedom of those who are strangers to the very word and its meaning in their lives.Nelson Mandela famously said, “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” With the freedom we possess, let us not only cast off the chains of those enslaved around the world, but completely destroy each social, political, and economic chain so that the idea and the complete enjoyment of freedom is itself unleashed.[1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=freedom&searchmode=none[2] Ibid[3] Adrian Gorun “The Idea of Freedom and the Premises of Liberalism in Greek Thought”. European Research Studies 13 (2) (2010): 6[4] Adrian Gorun “The Idea of Freedom and the Premises of Liberalism in Greek Thought”. European Research Studies 13 (2) (2010): 14