Angus Skinner, MAPP, works in his beloved and beautiful Scotland as an independent management consulting professional. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Strathclyde. He has over 40 years experience of social work services across the UK. As Chief Social Work Inspector for Scotland for 15 years, Angus provided advice directly to ministers on all matters of social work service legislation, policy, and practice development. Full bio. Articles on Positive Psychology News by Angus are here.
Why start with spicy soup? Because it is easy? Because it is nutritious? Because it is warm and somehow enveloping without ever suffocating? Because it is global, utterly.
Love isn?t spring-time. What brings a man to hit a baby, to kill a baby, his baby? What brings a mother to ignore, suffocate, her own feelings of love to let it happen? If love ruled, we would all have more courage, more hope. Hard stuff, but remember fear, not hate nor indifference, undermines love.
Love is all-time. Foolishly we urge often to be the most loved, each of us. If we narrow the categories, we want to be the only love and then we hit white water.
I would have love draped over me, close entwined. I would have those I love alert, active, and achieving in the world – for themselves and for others. I want to hold them and to free them. We cannot grade our loves nor should we be asked to. I hardly knew my grandfather yet I feel a lot of love for him, as indeed I do for my great grandfather. My children know I love them, absolutely.
Much of the soup of discourses is dire, desultory, and negative – not just the media, but in general, from canteen to family table. It lacks love – and spice. The media is focused on skepticism. It is quaint how they portray ?Well, just change the leader and all will be well? – it is also utterly irresponsible and a major failure of their craft. They ply the same nonsense across sport, fashion, and industry.
Love is a risky thing to have, to espouse, in modern western media. Positive psychology has put relationships back at the center of the top table – for economists and for politicians. Even for leaders, as described here and here. The media need to wake-up.Above all we are short on trust in societies. We must rebuild that.
Love alone will see us through the recession/depression. Fantastically – it will! It is a verb – loving is action.
Author’s Note: Lots of love, Angus
Images
Tom Yam Thale (Clear Sour and Spicy Seafood Soup)- from clayirving’s flickr photostream
Four seasons – the abandoned barn at Gresham – from Aunt Owwee’s flickr photostream
2 comments
Angus, you poet! Perhaps love, in some of the dimensions it is discussed in the posts this month, is an acquired taste?
Angus, thanks for the spicy soup metaphor! You gave us a creative, thought-provoking concept of love.
All the best,
Christine