Shadowing Practice: It’s Time to Stop Calling Suffering Love - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Love is one of those impossibly complex subjects to do justice to, because it sits at the centre, at the core of how we experience life itself.
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Love is one of those impossibly complex subjects to do justice to, because it sits at the centre, at the core of how we experience life itself.
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Every day, whether we are conscious of it or not, we are reaching for love.
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We are offering it, chasing it, withholding it or trying to prove that we deserve it.
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It's the crux of our humanity.
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And yet, for something so central, it remains wildly contentious.
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The more we try to encapsulate it, the further it seems to drift.
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I've always wondered why we can never seem to agree on a single definition of love.
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Every time you see some sort of content or discussion about love, there's like a hundred people under it arguing about who is right and who is wrong.
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And I believe it's because love borrows consciousness.
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It inherits the internal weather of the giver.
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People shaped by their beliefs, their pain, their past, their projections.
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And this includes us.
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So of course we don't agree.
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We define love based on who we are, what we lack or maybe what we believe we've been denied.
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That's why when someone in conflict with themselves offers you love, what you're most likely receiving is a residue of that conflict.
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And this is the kind of love that jolts a healthy nervous system.
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It feels like both sugar and poison.
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If you don't leave, or in the case of children and highly vulnerable people, if you can't leave, you may spend decades trying to expel that love from your soul.
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For someone searching for salvation outside of themselves, love will always look like rescue.
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And what they offer in return won't be connection.
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It will be a performance designed to meet their own emptiness.
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This is heaven for the person who only knows the kind of love that requires their utility.
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They feel loved when they are fixing, when they are needed, when they are sacrificing.
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Together they create a cycle, an ecosystem of codependency disguised as care.
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These are the kind of people who rush to my comments to correct me.
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What do you know, Pearl?
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You clearly don't understand love.
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What do you know?
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Love is sacrifice.
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Love is pain.
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You give everything, even if you don't get anything back.
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And I think to myself, ah, what you're describing isn't love.
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It's martyrdom.
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It's bondage.
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It's an addiction to erosion.
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And then you look at people who have emptied themselves of the poisons that distort love or who were perhaps lucky enough to be received into the world by gatekeepers, primary caregivers or communities who have done or are doing the work.
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Those people offer you something completely different, something steady and alive.
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They offer love that does not sting.
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They've learned the most integral truth to become a vessel of pure and true love.
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You must have a mutualistic, symbiotic relationship with it.
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While it takes root in your body, it must nourish you as much as it asks you to give.
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It cannot empty you.
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It cannot hollow you out.
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But for that to happen, you must allow it to first cleanse you of everything within you that could distort it.
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To become a clear channel, you must first become both student and beneficiary.
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To be a student of love is to unlearn everything you think you know about it.
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It's asking where your concept of it came from, who it came from and what it truly serves.
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To be its beneficiary is to let love tend to you before you rush to perform it for others.
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Too many of us want to give before we've received, to pour before we've been filled.
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That's how we've ended up with a series of broken people breaking others in the name of love.
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Now I could sit here and pretend I figured it all out but that would make me a liar.
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I wasn't introduced to love in its pure form.
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I've had to rewire my understanding of it piece by piece and I'm still learning.
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Because if you've never received real love, never seen it modeled for you, how do you become a true vessel of it?
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How do you carry something you've never held?
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And more importantly, how do you benefit from it so that what you offer isn't laced with need or survival?
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Over the years I've ruminated on these questions again and again and I think my breakthrough moment happened for me while I was watching a film.
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Honestly, I can't remember which one it was but I remember the feeling.
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Through the struggles and the dysfunction and the chaos that was being purported to be love as in most films of that genre, I recognized a sinking feeling in my gut.
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The same feeling I had held and felt for the first 20-ish years of my life and I came to this conclusion.
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If I take away the beautiful soundtrack of this well-crafted film, the close-ups, the cinematic pining and breathlessness and the physical attractiveness of these characters, this thing that I'm watching right now is the romantic mirror of the kind of love that made me incredibly ill.
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And then four simple words dropped into my spirit.
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Love is so soft.
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As someone who tends to lean towards logic, I immediately had a rebuttal.
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But sometimes it has to be tough.
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It's not easy, you know?
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And again, an answer returned, yes.
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But even when love requires you to do the hard thing, its nature is that it will always leave its vessels more grounded, more fulfilled, more nurtured.
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It does not subtract from you, it does not displace you.
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If the outcome is depletion and damage, that's not love.
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For that reason, love is always soft, even when it is fierce.
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That was a revelation that got me to start examining everything we are sold as love, loyalty, selflessness, sacrifice, possessiveness, endurance, submission, dependency.
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But when you zoom in on these things, you realize that so much of it is just mimicry, wearing the face of love but wounding you in its name.
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And make no mistake, that mimicry is not coincidence.
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It's curated.
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It's convenient for systems of power to package suffering as sacred.
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When martyrdom is labeled as the highest form of love, it becomes easier to control women, to condition children, vulnerable people, to glorify hustle and burnout, and to shame people into staying where they are no longer growing.
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If you can convince someone that love means losing or minimizing themselves, you can make them disappear without an overt act of violence.
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They become a silent weapon for their own destruction.
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And when that kind of love is all you've ever known, you begin to serve it quietly, loyally, blindly.
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Without awareness, many of us have become disciples of this violence.
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I think one of the first things that I had to challenge in relation to love was this idea of loyalty.
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Loyalty has to do with duty.
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And while love can evoke duty and responsibility, duty and responsibility can exist and be enforced without love.
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When we observe reality, we see that the expectation of loyalty has time and time again been used to detain and punish people.
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When misplaced, when demanded by an agent of chaos, pay attention, loyalty becomes a tool for annihilation, a weapon dressed as a virtue.
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The first person I am loyal to is myself.
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And I expect the people in my life to remain loyal first and foremost to themselves too.
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I like people who like themselves.
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I respect people who respect themselves.
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I want to be close to people who won't betray me or hurt me, not because they like me, no, but because that's just who they are.
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The kind of people who wouldn't harm or betray a stranger on the streets either.
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They are loyal to their own creed, their own way of being.
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And that in turn makes them trustworthy because it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with their relationship with themselves.
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I don't need to micromanage their behavior.
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I just have to trust myself and then trust them to be themselves.
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And this changes everything.
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It means that when I enter relationships with people like this, our love, our bond isn't built on holes or wounds we are hoping to patch through one another, but on a mutual commitment to care for ourselves first and to allow that care to inform how we nurture our union.
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Nobody disappears.
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Nobody diminishes.
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We all stay whole.
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Imagine what the world would be, could be, if instead of searching for people to give us something, we sought after those people who already embodied the values we hold sacred, not as a promise, but as a natural way of being.
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When you are loyal to yourself, you don't need to chase loyalty in other people.
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No, you simply observe.
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Are they loyal to themselves?
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Because someone who can't honor their own truths will never honor yours.
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I don't need anybody to swear loyalty to me.
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The hell? I just need to know that they are anchored in who they are and that they will show up from that place.
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Simple. The second thing I had to challenge was this idea that the nature of love is selfless.
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Ooh, this is a big one.
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And while I understand the appeal, selflessness sounds generous, even divine.
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But when we look at the results of so-called selfless love, we often find a trail of emptiness.
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The recipients, depending on who they are, feel smothered, sometimes indebted.
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If they are abusive, they take advantage.
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Then you see the giver, very sweet on the outside, but beneath the surface, they are simmering, bubbling with unmet needs, repressed desires, and resentment.
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Because when you strip away your identity in the name of love, when you abandon yourself while calling it selfless, it's not love you are offering, it's captivity.
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If you want a real-life example of this, gather around all those people whose parents and caregivers were saying things like, you are my everything.
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I do, I do everything for you.
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I gave up everything for you.
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I will die for you.
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Those people whose parents supposedly stayed in abusive relationships for them, ask them if that version of love was healing or in fact haunting.
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I'm almost certain the latter is the case.
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I know this may be uncomfortable to hear.
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I tell you, it's uncomfortable to say.
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But I'm convinced that the concept of selfless love in the way it's most often used, finds its strongest benefactors in abusive people and institutions.
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This is where we must learn to distinguish between choiceful selfless giving and selfless love.
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You want to be someone who can, from a place of awareness and knowledge, give selflessly where needed, but you never want to love selflessly.
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Because if love excludes you, it cannot be love.
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It can't. No.
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No. To love in a way that heals rather than harms, in a way that does not require the erosion of any participating entities, you must come to understand that love in its truest form can only be extended.
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And to extend anything, your care, your presence, your grace, you must first possess it.
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You must know it.
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You must live it.
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You cannot offer wholeness if you've never claimed it for yourself.
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Because to offer anything consciously, to give it with integrity, you must first be in relationship with it.
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To extend a hand to you, I must be aware of my hand and its purpose.
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This is why a chunk of ancient wisdom points to loving others as we love ourselves, to treating people with the kindness we expect.
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It's not just poetic fluff.
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It's a law, a law rooted in our veins.
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This is the reason why my first instinct every single time for people who don't love themselves is to run for the hills.
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And I'm sorry to say, every time I've ignored that instinct, I've suffered.
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Every single time.
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Because if you treat yourself carelessly, you surely would do the same to me.
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Not always intentionally, but certainly eventually.
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You cannot give what you do not possess.
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And even if you're somehow the exception, somehow capable of offering sweetness despite your own starvation, you will inevitably make me your lifeline.
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And that is dangerous.
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Because love does not bind.
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Love expands you.
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It frees you.
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It releases both the vessel and the people who come in contact with it.
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The kinds of love that leave people broken rarely ever come from villains.
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They come from unconscious people.
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People who have no connection to their vessel, no commitment to themselves.
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People who confuse devotion with depletion.
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People who offer their ache instead of their essence.
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I believe one of the best ways to understand a subject is to identify the things that hinder it.
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We all know that love is kind and compassionate, but those two things are not possible without boundaries.
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The kindest people in the world are those who know where they start and end and where others begin.
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I cannot do what those people who have come before me haven't done by pretending that I've decoded this whole thing.
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Not at all.
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I'm just inviting you.
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When in doubt, ask.
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Does this help me grow?
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Us grow? Them grow?
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Does this nourish these bonds and the hearts that exist within it?
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That's the question love will ask.
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I think of the wording of things like ride or die and remain baffled as to why we continue to link love to death and demise when its nature is life-giving.
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Why do I have to die for my love to pack a punch?
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This is the foundation of systems that benefit from self-neglect.
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You hear it in the tales of ever -giving people who did everything for everyone yet the stories are never about their personhood, only about their utility.
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But of course this sounds like love to a person who has no concept of themselves outside of being a tool.
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So hearing me say things like you are worthy simply because you exist becomes triggering because if they have to work their hearts and bones off to be valued, how dare I suggest that others can get it just by being?
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How dare I, this random woman on the internet, suggest that they are wasting their time?
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I get it. But why isn't love ever framed as ride and rise?
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I'll walk beside you through your mess but I won't become collateral damage.
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I'll witness your pain but I won't bleed just to prove that I see it.
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And you won't expect me to either because love is as love does.
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This isn't a death pact.
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We are committed to rising together, to living.
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There's one thing you take from this episode, I hope it is this.
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Consider that love is not I would die for you.
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Love is I will live not for you but for me.
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Not because you don't matter but so that you never have to carry the burden of death, the ache of demise as proof of love.
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I will live fully, freely, completely as a testament to the transformative nature of love so that when you look at me you might dare to do the same.
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I hope you see that love comes without shackles.
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I hope you fly just as I do.
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I hope you find a home within yourself just as I have.
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And when you need some rest, come rest beside me because I've never stopped filling my own cup and have enough overflow for you to tap into.
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This love I carry does not require your death or mine.
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This love begs us to live.
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As always, it's been an absolute pleasure.
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My name is Pearl and I'll see you in the next video.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will delve into the complex topic of love as discussed in the video "It’s Time to Stop Calling Suffering Love." You'll explore the various perceptions and misconceptions surrounding love, helping you articulate your thoughts more clearly in English. Through this exercise, you will enhance your IELTS speaking practice by learning to express nuanced ideas about emotional topics. Engaging with the rich language in this transcript will also support your overall english speaking practice, particularly through the lens of personal experiences and beliefs.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Complex - consisting of many different parts; not simple.
- Consciousness - the state of being aware of and able to think about one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, and surroundings.
- Codependency - a psychological condition where one person cannot function without another, often leading to an unhealthy relationship.
- Symbiotic - involving interaction between two different entities that is beneficial to both.
- Martyrdom - the act of sacrificing one's own well-being for others, often seen in unhealthy relationships.
- Nourish - to provide with the food or other substances necessary for growth and health.
- Empty yourself - to let go of emotional burdens or past experiences that distort your understanding of love.
- Mutualistic - a relationship that benefits both parties involved.
Practice Tips
To effectively improve your speaking skills using this video transcript, consider the following shadowing techniques:
- Listen and Imitate: Play the video in short segments and pause after each sentence. Repeat what you hear. Pay attention to the intonation and emotion behind each word, as this will help you sound more natural when expressing complex feelings.
- Slow It Down: If the speaker's pace is too fast, slow down the video. This will give you a better grasp of pronunciation and rhythm, which is crucial during english speaking practice.
- Reflect on Content: After each segment, take a moment to pause and think about what you just repeated. Try to restate the ideas in your own words. This reinforces vocabulary retention and prepares you for discussions in scenarios such as the IELTS speaking practice.
- Focus on Emotional Nuance: The topic of love is inherently emotional and complex. As you shadow speak, try to convey not just the words, but also the feelings behind them. This will enhance your expressiveness in conversations related to personal experiences.
- Engage with Others: Find a study partner to discuss key themes raised in the video. This will allow you to practice speaking spontaneously and apply what you've learned in a conversational context, further enhancing your learn English with YouTube experience.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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