Moving closer to or further from love

A parable about the essence of love:

A father has a son. One day the son does something so upsetting that the father says he won’t talk to him anymore.

A year goes by. Two years. Five. Ten.
Suddenly, twenty years have passed.

One day, the father gets a phone call.

It’s a hospital in the far east.
They say your son was in a terrible accident.
He has seventy-two hours to live.
This is the address of the hospital.
This is the floor. This is the room.

What does the father do?

He gets on the first plane to Thailand.
He catches the first taxi to the hospital.
Takes the first elevator to the floor, rushes to the son’s room and collapses on his bed.

He looks at his son with love.

Why?

Because the essence of the relationship is that of love.
The revelation of the relationship was clouded over time, but when life and death was introduced, then the essence of love becomes clear again.

The story continues.

The doctor comes into the room and says, “I’m sorry, we made a mistake. Your son was in the accident but another person was injured badly. Your son only hurt his ankle.”

The father is relieved. Does he go back to not talking to his son?
That depends on if they lose sight of the essence of the the relationship.

Now, imagine you live next in an apartment next to the father and you hear that the family across the hall just had a fight. The mother is not talking to her daughter anymore. What would you tell her?

Don’t wait until something bad happens.
Remember the essence of the relationship.

Not all relationships are built on love.
But those that are must remember — the closer to the essence, the better.

And every conversation either brings us closer to or further away from love.

Keep choosing love,
Orly