Love’s Dynamic

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No one will argue that what we experience as a child impacts our well being as adults. This has been demonstrated time and time again when people have trusted me enough to share the thoughts and yearnings and heartaches of their childhood.

Young children, even babies, have a natural inclination to love and trust. Unlike adults, children give both love and trust freely without the filters experience imposes. Children deprived of love carry the wound inflicted throughout their lifetime. A tutoring client told me the story of her childhood. She was one of twelve children. Describing their poverty, she said that she was the little girl in the photos one sees of children in very poor countries; barefoot, ragged, dirty clothes, unkempt hair. She went on to say that it was not the poverty that left lifelong scars, but the fact that there was no love in their house and it was this that left a poverty of the soul.

It is no different then a person who has one leg shorter than the other as a result of a childhood accident. The original wound and injury may be mostly forgotten, but the limp, and the limitations imposed by it, will remain throughout that person’s life. So too the love-starved heart of a child. The void where love should have been will always be there with its inherent pain. It will manifest as insecurity, an inability to trust and in addictive behaviour. Some, perhaps all of these symptoms can be overcome to some degree. The adult can live a productive and happy life with no visible scars. But, buried however deep, the scar remains covering the wound, which is a hole where love should have been.

Having listened to the stories of countless people through the years it is evident that trust issues and feeling alone are a common theme. So many people find it difficult, if not impossible, to express what we refer to as ‘feelings’, particularly feelings that expose our pain or what is perceived as our weaknesses. Inevitably, the source of their closely-held hurts can be traced to their childhood when love was given in its perfection and returned less than perfectly.

In contrast, children who are given a solid foundation of love go through life with a rock-solid sense of who they are, confident in their place in the world. As adults they are equipped with the all-important tool of self-worth. Knowing unconditional love as a child, it is natural for them to love themselves without conscious effort. The result is an innate assumption that the challenges of life and living will be met and that success is a given. There are, of course, other factors that play a part in success as a human being, but I am convinced the most important is the gift of unconditional love given in the first years of life.

I once worked with a woman who stands out as an example of the benefits of being loved absolutely from childhood. The company had sent out a young woman from Toronto to train for the position I held under contract. A few days after arriving, she became quite ill. As Branca passed my desk, I stopped her with the intent of telling her about ‘Judy', asking if she had a minute. Her reply was that she was due in a meeting in two minutes. However, when I told her it was personal, she immediately sat down and said, “Then I have the time.”  That night Branca went to the hotel where Judy was staying and spent the entire evening with a perfect stranger so she would not be alone and sick in a strange city. This incident happened twenty years ago and yet it remains etched in my memory as extraordinary behaviour.

When Branca took me to lunch at the completion of the contract I took the opportunity to comment on her helping Judy. She responded by saying that she had grown up with parents who loved and supported her, had a perfect marriage and a job that was fulfilling and rewarding. As a result it was natural for her to give back when and where she could. In all the hundreds of people I have known, this successful, self-assured woman is the only one to make such a statement. Such is the power of love at its finest, particularly when given to a child.

Love of a Child