The Ultimate Holiday Gift
Unconditional love is the greatest gift you have to offer and it costs you nothing.
Nov 16, 2006
Are you looking for the perfect Holiday gift? This year give the greatest gift you have to offer. A gift sure to be appreciated long after boxes are opened and wrappings discarded. This is a gift longed for by most and received by few. But you have it to give, and it will cost you next to nothing!
Give the gift of your unconditional love. A good way that I've found to do this is with a Holiday letter. I have a tradition of writing a letter to each of my loved ones every year. We celebrate Christmas, so my letter is hand delivered with Christmas gifts. For remote loved ones you might want to send a letter, an email, or make a personal phone call to express your unconditional love.
In my letter I like to enumerate a few of the traits that I most admire in this person. I also use the opportunity to convey my thanks for ways they contribute joy to my life. Most importantly though, I reinforce my unconditional love in very direct and clear language.
Unconditional love is just that, love without conditions. To love unconditionally is a choice. It's not something a person earns by what he or she does; it's what he or she deserves just for being alive. You choose to love unconditionally simply because you want to do so.
The beauty of unconditional love is that the giver gets as much as the receiver. It's amazing how much energy and emotion is tied up in loving conditionally, because each party in the relationship has to work very hard to measure and measure up to the relationship conditions. Often, the conditions are unspoken, making it even more difficult to comply. And conditional love never conveys the full measure of joy inherent in unconditional love.
Once you choose to love unconditionally though, a magical empowerment overtakes you and you feel free of the task of being someone's judge and jury.
Unconditional love doesn't mean that you must give up your boundaries and standards of acceptable behavior. If a person's behavior is unacceptable to you and the person refuses to or is unable to change that behavior, exercise your right to separate yourself.
If you were fortunate enough to be loved unconditionally as a child you probably already give this gift generously. But many, many people are raised in an environment where love has to be earned, over and over again. This Holiday season is a wonderful time to change all that with the gift that gives as much to the giver as to the receiver.
Give it a try. Write a letter or card in your words, speaking with your voice and expressing what you want a loved one to know; now, not at the end of your life, but now.
