Here is your Monday STORY on: LOVE: Love is an intense feeling of deep affection. Love can also mean an intense sexual attraction to someone. If we forget the personal feeling for a moment, how would we describe someone who shows love to the world? Perhaps a good example would be that you offer the same affection to everyone, whether a neighbour or an enemy. If you met a stranger, then you would offer the same help regardless. Of course this feeling of offering love to the world is one that many would think they readily apply each day. Like many moments of sadness a spiralling effect is created. If you are hurting, or you are suffering regular bouts of pain, your temperament is more unstable than normal; and your ability to offer love diminishes. Alternatively if you experience a few moments of selfishness, your greed to serve than mood increases and the chance of you offering any love also diminishes. Not me! Cries the reader… Unless you are very saintly, selfishness is difficult to shrug off. In some small way, each day, there is evidence of a selfish action. Forgive me for suggesting it can be eliminated, but selfishness can be weakened. To see it and understand it is half the battle. Have you ever been in a similar situation to this merchant in the next story? A HASIDIC STORY A wealthy Jewish merchant treats a poor old man with rudeness and disdain as they travel together on a train. When they arrive at their common destination, the merchant finds the station thronged with pious Jews waiting in ecstatic joy to greet the arrival of one of the holiest rabbis in Europe, and learns to his frustration that the old man in his compartment is that saintly rabbi. Embarrassed at his disgraceful behaviour and distraught that he missed a golden opportunity to speak in privacy to a wise and holy man, the merchant pushes his way through the crowd to find the old man. When he reaches him, he begs the rabbi's forgiveness and requests his blessing. The old rabbi looks at him and replies, "I cannot forgive you. To receive forgiveness you must go out and beg it from every poor old person in the world." (by: Brian Cavanaugh, T.O.R., The Sower's Seeds). QUOTE: “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson).