You probably heard the song, “What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love.” For me, that’s not entirely the truth. Love is the motivation. What the world needs now is healing; the kind of healing that first succors inner pain. Inner pain is getting hurt by criticisms, negative attitudes, rejection, discouragements, quarrels, disappointments and much more. People get hurt everyday, including you and me. Yet, what makes it worse is that we tend to try to nurse our emotional wounds first.
When we seek to heal our inner pain first, we actually magnify the pain, become self-centered and become useless to others and ourselves.
Yet, we can actually bring healing to ourselves when we first seek to be a healer unto others! How can this be so?
One, we are able to release our inner pain by tending to the pain of another. To focus only on our own pain is to
keep it locked in to fester. When inner pain festers, it turns us into bitter and resentful people forever carrying emotional excess baggage.
However, when we tend to the inner pain of others, our own inner pain seeps out to be replaced by compassion. When we focus on the pain of others, we begin to realize that our own hurts are really quite small and manageable.
Two, we can learn from the pain of others. A great part of bringing succor to others is to listen to them. Many times you’ll discover that lending a listening ear to someone will already heal that person. By listening, we can discover the root of that person’s pain and thereby learn the root of our pain.
By listening, we open ourselves to the pursuit of wisdom. To pursue wisdom is to bring us to the path of inner change. Inner change can effectively deal with inner pain.
Thirdly, what we release ultimately returns to us. When we heal others, the healing returns to us. When we listen to others, others will listen to us. When we care for others, others will care for us. When we release compassion, compassion returns to us.
When we seek to be a healer, we not only build an environment of healing, we inadvertently build a community of healers.
You can be a healer. All it takes is the willingness to be one.