Every outward action that a human being does, has a reciprocal internal action to that individual.

To love is to feel loved.

To hate to feel hated.

To hurt someone is to feel hurt yourself.

And so on…

This force which I think is stronger in some people than others pulls us to be good citizens and makes us miserable when we are not. To fully appreciate this power you need to be opened to the world and outwardly focused.

To love is the greatest joy a human being can experience. A new parents almost always feels the enormity of caring for and loving a child. And although raising a child is difficult and dynamic – the feeling of purpose and love makes the process imbued with joy.

This idea leads to a simple conclusion. The best way to be healthy mentally is to try to fix problems outside of oneself. The best self-work is often external work. Often a good start to getting out of a deep sadness can begin with someone simple like cleaning ones room. This cleaning also cleanses the soul in a small way. To maintain outward homeostasis maintains ones internal homeostasis.

I am not sure why this reciprocal process happens. One possibility is that human are so incredibly interconnected to their environment and other people, that actions on others affect us in the same way. We are fish swimming in water, and the when the water changes, so do we.

Reciprocal flow gives us an incentive to love the world and thus love ourselves. People often think of themselves as separate from the world, entities acting upon a world rather than within it. We are just separated by the thinnest of membranes from our surrounding – and the membrane itself maybe itself an illusion. We are the world.

To me, this makes loving inanimate objects seem more reasonable. While stuffed animals can’t feel joy, we can by our care of them. Of course caring for a living creature has added benefit. It provides another side for accepting love, but half as good is still good.

Let me suggest that the next opportunity you have to forgive another or love another or help another it will impact you as powerfully as it affects another. This is perhaps the single greatest power of being human.

As we create our environment we also create ourselves. As we destroy our environment, we destroy ourselves. There is no escape from this universal truth.