Walking in love

Have you ever asked yourself any of these questions?

“What’s happening to humanity?”
“Why is there so much hate, racism, crime?”
“Why do we all live in war?”

If you think about it, we should all be living together in peace as humans keeping this planet from harm, keeping it clean, respecting it as well as each other. Have you noticed that the way people act now versus 60 years ago is much different? Why are there so many school shootings? Why is there so much drug addiction? Why are the divorce rates so high? Why are there so many single parents? Why are there so many children in foster care?

I ask myself these questions all the time, and I realize that more and more that none of us are walking in love. What does walking in love truly mean? There are seven core values that we should all live by in order to walk in love. Dignity, Honor, Respect, Integrity, Loyalty, Forgiveness, and Love. In this blog, I will explain each one of them and show you ways to “walk in love.” These values are what we should be teaching our children, and showing our friends, neighbors, and family.

The Seven Core Values of Walking in Love

1. Dignity – This is the sense of pride in one’s self-respect. When you have dignity and respect, as a human being, you don’t let others talk you down. You don’t act out of character when you’re treaded inappropriately. You try to be humble amongst those around you and for yourself, for your health, heart and soul.
2. Honor – This means to keep your word and obligations to honor the elderly, to honor what you truly believe in, and to always stand by it.
3. Respect – This is a feeling of deep admiration for someone’s abilities, qualities, beliefs, and achievements.
4. Integrity – This is having the quality of being honest and having strong, moral principles. Integrity means doing the right thing even when no one else sees you doing it.
5. Loyalty – To show loyalty means to demonstrate unwavering support, allegiance, and faithfulness to a person, group, cause, or principle.
6. Forgiveness – To show forgiveness means to release feelings of resentment or the desire for revenge, and to grant pardon or absolution to someone who has wronged you. This is an active decision to let go of resentment and anger towards someone.
7. Love – This is an intense feeling of deep affection. Love is not only a feeling…but a choice as well.

All of these things represent what should be our core values, and these are the values that we should live by each and every day. This has nothing to do with any type of religion; this is spiritually everything we do and everything we are. Humanity needs to be able to get back to this.

We also need to practice tolerance, not only for ourselves, but we need to be able to tolerate others by showing dignity, honor, respect, integrity, loyalty, forgiveness and love. If you want to be a person of substance, you must care for others. We must remember that whatever we surround ourselves with is what we become. You must know yourself first and be able to operate in these seven core values. The point is not perfection, it’s persistence and demonstrating the process of becoming better at this thing called life worth living. Life is a journey, and the journey is what matters, not the final destination.

In conclusion, I want to welcome everyone to therapy, so you can learn to love yourself and to be able to forgive the ones that hurt you. You will learn how to honor yourself, respect yourself, have integrity, loyalty, love…all of which mold you into a leader and good person. The whole purpose of counseling is to take someone who is in crisis and mentor them. We will gladly work with you to guide you in these seven core values and help you become the best person you can be!

-Paulina Cardella