We receive love from others, but there are also times when people hurt us. It may sometimes happen intentionally, accidentally, or could well be the way we react given our state of mind. The fact remains that we may have been hurt and often that leaves us agitated and confused going forward. When people hurt us, we have three choices; we can hurt them back, we can avoid them, or we can love them.

Hurt can trigger off anger and retaliation in us. The feeling of getting back at someone may give us temporary respite from our hurt, but we cannot escape the long-term consequence of carrying anger, bitterness, and revenge. At the same time, we often wonder that by not hitting back do we come across as weak? Sometimes our goodness and better sense may come across as us being soft and not tough enough. But it takes a lot of strength to calibrate our response with positivity and restraint. Hurting someone back hurts us in the long run.

We can choose to avoid people who may have hurt us. Sometimes it is prudent to step aside and move on from a very challenging relationship. Walking away is not running away. But there are times we cannot keep avoiding the person and need to address the underlying hurt and reset the relationship. It is good to avoid people when we believe we need to move past the relationship, but we must not avoid having difficult conversations with people who matter and may have hurt us.

And the most difficult of all is to find love and care for someone who may have hurt us. People hurt us when they operate from a certain plane of awareness and consciousness. If we were to respond from the same plane, the relationship will be the victim. But if we shift our thinking and respond from a space of care and empathy, we don’t allow the dark cloud of hurt to block the flow of our natural love. And when we develop the ability to do that, we don’t need the light, but we become the light that dispels hurt in relationships.

In spite of best efforts, things will happen and we will get hurt, we don’t have a choice. But our healing depends on the choices we make when people hurt us.

(Picture-Sunflowers in a garden in Scotland)