Healing—whether from a difficult relationship, stress, or any form of oppression—follows a natural progression: separation → wonder/curiosity → reality-testing → experimentation → love.
Joe describes this through healing his relationship with his abusive, alcoholic father. First, he had to separate and see his father as “the bad guy” to find himself. But at some point, that anger prevented further healing. The first opening toward love was curiosity: wondering about his father’s childhood, what was actually happening.
“The main component of loving something is to just let it unfold through wonder and exploration and experimentation.”
You can’t skip steps. If you feel oppressed by something, you can’t force yourself to love it directly. You have to be mad at it for a while, create separation, allow wonder to open, and then love emerges naturally through experimentation.
The same progression applies to stress: create separation (sleep, vacation), wonder about the stress (intellectually and somatically), set boundaries, discover what’s actually true, experiment with relating to it differently, and love naturally emerges.
Related Concepts
- Wonder and stress cannot coexist neurologically
- Loving something to make it go away stops working
- Joy requires welcoming all emotions
- Longing and loneliness are love in disguise