As I am writing this editorial, Good Friday and Easter draw near. These two days in the Christian calendar always make me think of the universal concept of love.

Love is the most powerful of all forces that drives the human being. Anywhere. Anytime. Love is life. For Christians, Easter symbolises the renewal of life through love as a creative force.

It is my belief that a human being’s destiny is driven by this one force above any others: love.

Intrinsic in love is also the need to create. To create is to be engaged in the energy of love. Thus love is an experience as well as a process that creates.

Love and the urge for creativity are partners in life. Love and the need to create are universal. Teilhard Chardin, the Persian mystic, claimed that if we could harness the energy of love, we would transform the world. In other words, we can re-create the world. Creation and re-creation. Changes. Tranformation. The resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter Day speaks of a Transformation through love. In its most ultimate and therefore spiritual manifestation, love is really the search for our soul. In its most basic and concrete manifestation, love, when linked with the need to create could bring the birth of another human life.

From a Chinese Taoist viewpoint, love is expressed as a force of change as well. Lao Tse said in the Tao Te Ching: to conquer others, we need force, to conquer oneself we need strength. Loving oneself needs strength in exercising discipline for our health and taking care of our mind, body and spirit.  The transformation of Self through martial arts is an example of a wholistic way to Self love.

In doing so, your relationship with yourself will be more peaceful and your relationship with others will be enhanced. All these is possible if we know how to manage love properly and harness its energy for the good of self and others. The reward and the result of this process is the explosion of creativity in every facet of our life. This can bring a deep happiness that has no cause, no source and no end point. It comes from nowhere and yet is everywhere. It is related to no one and yet we feel bonded with the whole of humanity. It is fleeting yet we have a sense of timelessness. It is very real yet there is a surrealistic feel to it. It is more than happiness.

It is bliss.

It is when the blueness of the sky meets the blueness of the sea on a summer day. It is when the silence of the mountains sings to us. It is when we discover the truth of loving properly. It is knowing that we know that the love inside is also the love outside, that our inner and outer Lovers are one and the same and they are in perfect harmony. In that state, we can truly love our Self and that is the primary prerequisite for loving the Other(s). The ability to loving properly is also the essence of one of Confucius’ great virtues: reciprocity. Loving properly is the final human challenge for Confucianist Chinese and other Sinitic peoples such as Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese.

Learning how to love properly is not a course offered in any school, college or university in the world that you can take. Only the lives of Great Ones can teach us how. Jesus, in His resurrection on the day of Easter is one such great example of learning how to love properly.