By Dina Aldabbagh

Real enlightenment is the understanding that we live to live with and for others. Yes our lives are ours, but we live life for other people. It’s for this same reason that being a parent is considered the most rewarding job in the world, although also the most taxing — because your kids are the testament to your sacrifice. The extent in which you care for them reveals the amount of love you have in you. 

American culture is great for its individualism — I will not say that’s a bad thing. It’s a crucial, core aspect of a human being to understand that your universe does revolve around you. You are its creator, its sculptor, the glasses in which the world is understood. You are the world’s eyes — being experienced through a single perspective. This is not a bad thing. It is a baseline understanding for how we must approach the world. You must consider, in all things, yourself first. You are the effect and who is doing the affecting. You are the center of gravity in your life. Understanding this is important.

Other cultures, while beautifully acknowledging the importance of sacrifice for one another, sometimes allow that sense of interconnectedness we have to carry the weight of their own personal responsibility for this life. Therefore the individualism of Western societies — and its sense of ownership of one’s own actions — can be an extremely beneficial addition to life. 

However when individualism becomes too much of a focus where sacrifice for others is lost from the sightline, well then, like anything else taken to an extreme, it becomes corrupted. Too much individualism takes one too far to the side they shouldn’t go if they want a happy life. Suddenly, the ego is sensitive, pride is driving behavior, and a stress and pressure is applied like you can’t believe. 

There must be a balance; this is absolutely true. We cannot have too much individualism nor too much sacrifice. However, let’s not forget what the entire point of life is. No, it’s not to do the most impressive thing, to have the best career, nor to be remembered in history books. Actually, I believe it is much more valuable to be remembered by a small family of five people as a meaningful person in their life. 

We live for others. And by doing so, we, in turn, are given life back. They say you die twice, once when you’re buried and the next when your name is spoken for the last time. The people who we chose to love are the same ones who give us a longer life on this earth. They will be the ones who remember you. 

To love somebody else is, I think, to humble yourself and exalt them. Surely this is a simplified version of it, but I think that’s what I see at the core of all love. To love someone in any moment is to say “I will humble myself to make you the focus of care here.” It says: “I’ll put aside my pride. I will have no ego. I will be the one to make the effort. I will compromise. I will let the spotlight be on you, and I will be the one to hold it.” Momentarily, you step to the shadows so that somebody else can have the attention.

This doesn’t mean to be self-depricating and act like everyone else is more valuable than you — which I think it’s often confused for. Isn’t it? It’s a bit of a pop-culture thing to see a man who loves a woman and say “he’s whipped” — as though somehow him raising her up is him lowering himself. I think this is the most skewed perspective there is. 

My urge is for you to understand that in loving someone else — in raising them up — you raise yourself up. For it doesn’t matter how people treat us, but how we treat people. You don’t get into heaven for how highly people thought of you, how much attention they paid to you, complimented you, or validated you. Otherwise every celebrity would be in heaven. However your ticket to heaven has nothing to do with the treatment you received from others, but rather your own personal conduct — how you treated other people. 

Don’t get me wrong, the nice clothes, nice apartment, nice careers, nice job title — it’s nice. But…that’s all it is. Nice. Fun to experience. A beautiful decoration to hopefully an already beautiful life. What gives life that beauty, though, is not anything that will satisfy the ego yet hunger the soul. That’s what all decorations do. They’re not evil, but they’re not meaningful in and of themselves. They can’t satiate what the soul’s looking for. 

The meaningful thing in life is to matter to others. I think the confusion comes where people think they will matter to others when they have all the right credentials, lose the weight, or get the perfect lips. The truth is that that stuff doesn’t make anybody care about you. What moves people and lets them feel truly connected to you is the extent to which you love them. The people we matter to, matter to us. 

If you are willing to extend the kindness, extend the greeting, extend the invite, extend the smile, then you are already loving somebody. To love someone doesn’t have to be this huge event. It never is. It’s not someone standing outside your window with a speaker telling you one time that they love you. 

Rather, it’s the accumulation of all the small things. It’s making your mom coffee before you sit down to have yours. It’s letting your 5 year old nephew finish the whole speech that doesn’t make any sense so he feels heard. It’s showing up and doing language practice for someone you just met just to see them. It’s eye contact. It’s letting someone finish their sentence. It’s assuming good intent when someone hurts you. It’s acquiescing to someone’s request just because they want it, not at all because it needs to make sense. 

When you love someone else, you shape their life. Think of the most memorable people of your life…they are the ones who loved you the most. Not even necessarily the ones who you loved the most. Really just the people whose love, directed towards us, shaped our lives. The friend who gives you the invite is infinitely more impactful to your life than the one who you have to constantly invite. Not because there’s anything innately good or bad about being the inviter/invitee, but rather because the person who is making that effort, setting up the plans, choosing the people to be there, deciding on the place and time to meet, is, invariably, shaping your life as a result. 

Therefore, to love someone else is to give their lives form. You make their lives matter. You are a formative variable of their life, so in turn, you matter to them. Without your love, your effort, your calls, your time, their life would look very differently. In other words, your love is like the observation of electrons that change waves into tangible particles. It gives form to others. You shape others. You make their lives matter. You impact them, then. They are not the same with and without your love. 

As such, this is simply the most meaningful effect you can possibly have in life, and it has to do with others. We live to give love to others. Then, even if nobody loves us back, we still make the water we swim in all love — and we get to live there. However, that will never happen. There is no world in which you are truly good to people — kind, forgiving, patient, respectful, positive, making an effort — where others don’t love you. It’s inevitable. The love you give is the love you get — but so you know, whether the love comes from others or not, you are still experiencing your own love. If love is all you put out, then it’s just the air you breathe. It’s all around you. 

To love others, even if it momentarily looks like they’re not actively loving you back, is never a loss. It’s called “sacrifice” to give up something important for the sake of other considerations, but you don’t really give up anything at all. Everything you give is always a gain. The love you give to others is always a net positive for you. 

The people we sacrifice our time for are the exact ones that give our lives meaning. You’re giving them a share of your life, and in return, they give definition to what matters in your life. So, you see, it is a very interconnected web we live in, and the only thing that ever really matters is the people with whom we reciprocally choose to give our lives meaning.

At the end of your life, you will remember who you gave the most of your life to, and who gave the most of their lives to you. Hopefully, those people are more or less the same. That job will not remember you for the way you laugh or the cadence in which you speak, just for your earnings. A career is a crucial tool of living in the world we do and also extremely rewarding to dedicate yourself towards — as many of our investments are — but never forget what really matters. Never forget the mouths that will speak your name for the last time. 

That’s the point of it all.