Marianna Williamson Quote on How All Human Behavior Is Either Love Or A Call For Love

“The way of the miracle-worker is to see all human behavior as one of two things: either love or a call for love.”

Marianna Williamson

Beyond the Quote (Day 405)

I have been a Martial Arts Instructor for my entire professional life and have had the privilege of working with thousands of students of all ages and from all different backgrounds. Based on all of the human behavior that I have experienced, I see it as the same: either as acts of love or as calls for love. And usually, it’s the students who are acting out the most who are calling for love the loudest.

When students are fully immersed in the moment, are free of their past, have forgotten their future worries, are captivated by the dynamics of the art, are deliberately practicing, and have (at least for the moment) silenced their inner critic: I see nothing but pure manifestations of love. I see curiosity; excitement; kindness; generosity; warmth; and joy radiate from all of them regardless of their background—especially when working with the youngest ones.

What I suspect happens, especially as we grow older, is we are slowly exposed more and more to the suffering and hardship of the world and we make adaptations to cope with the accompanying pain. Maybe we experience the repercussions of a toxic relationship between our parents or an unstable home. Or we become victims of bullying from peers. Or maybe we start to see the world through the eye of the news and harden from the fear-inducing, dramatic, malevolent reports that ooze from all of our surrounding screens.

And maybe this extends beyond just what we see and hear and we start to become sensitive to the anxiety, worry, and upset that engulfs our loved ones. Or maybe we are abused, mistreated, or neglected, and left without any good model to navigate a way forward. Maybe the pain becomes overwhelming and we aren’t shown a strong enough, sensical alternative. Maybe what happens is slowly, slowly, our softness hardens. Our vigor fades. Our guiding light becomes dark. And we protect ourselves the only way we know how—based on what we’ve come to learn from our past.

Maybe we act chaotically because chaos was the world we grew up in. Maybe we act rebelliously in an attempt to break free from the suffocating conditions of our environment. Maybe we act with hate because our love would always go unnoticed. Maybe we act with aggression because indifference left us feeling out of control. Maybe we bury our emotions and harden our demeanor to protect ourselves from being seen as “soft” or getting broken by people similar to those who broke us before.

Maybe we navigate our way through the world not without love, but with deeply buried love. Love that isn’t lost, but love that hasn’t been reciprocated. Love that hasn’t been seen or understood or validated. Love that is calling, calling, calling for another love to hear. Shaped not like the love of a young Martial Arts student immersed and completely present in a class; but shaped like hate, indifference, trouble, and hardness because that’s the shape love takes when the call for love isn’t answered.

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Read Next: What’s The Opposite of Love? Hate or Indifference? …And What It Means For You.

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