Infantile love follows the principle: I love because I am loved. Mature love follows the principle: I am loved because I love. ~ Erich Fromm

Once we believed it was all about us,
either that we needed to run the world,
that we were on everyone’s mind,
that everyone hated us and opposed us…
or all of the above. Then we found Recovery
and discovered definitively
that it WAS all about us…that our anger
for cruelties long past resulted
not from some mistreatment
we “recalled” and resented for years
but that we played a part…usually the major one
in setting up the situation causing our own grievance.
We learned others didn’t make us angry
or sad or lonely or enraged…that only we could do it.
We learned that others could not make us happy
by treating us kindly but that as we treated them with love
as we wished to be treated we received love
in giving it away.