Several weeks ago, while visiting with friends, we were surprised with a childhood favorite for desert – Klondike bars. All of us chuckled, giggled, and began singing the jingle “what would you do for a Klondike bar?” Since then, our taste buds restimulated, we have purchased them perhaps too many times for our own home and been singing the jingle to each other and to the friends we have shared them with.
While the ice cream was wonderful, the jingle is what has had me thinking the last few weeks. What would you do for a Klondike bar? We should not have to do anything other then accept and enjoy it. As long as I have some in my freezer or have access to them, there is nothing I would do for a Klondike bar. If somebody came to my door and offered me a years supply of free Klondike bars with the understanding that I would do whatever they asked me to without question, I would say thank you, but no thank you. Knowing me, I would probably offer them one out of my freezer. But what if I could not. What if I didn’t have any in my home, nor money to buy any, and the stores were not carrying them anymore. What then might I be willing to do for a Klondike bar? If that same person then came to my door and offered me that same years supply of free Klondike bars with those same conditions, I might be more willing to say yes because I might feel as if this was my one and perhaps only chance to have something I really wanted to eat.
Ok, so maybe you would not accept Klondike bars with conditions. But what if we were talking about love instead. What would you do to receive love? When we love ourselves and our heart, mind and soul are overflowing with love, then being offered to be loved by someone if we agree to their conditions would not be something most of would do. We would be able to say thank you, but we have so much love in our hearts that we do not need conditional love. When we have so much love in our hearts, we even have love for the person who is trying to give us conditional love.
However, I can remember times in my life, and perhaps you can as well, when I did not love myself as much as I do now. How many of us have ever had a time in our lives when all we wanted was for someone to love us. We would tell ourselves, if somebody would love us then everything would be okay. If only somebody would love us then we would be totally fulfilled human beings. When we are starving for love, what conditions are we willing to agree to? What are we then willing to do for that proverbial Klondike bar? The problem is that when we are starving for love, we become dependent on that love for our happiness. We begin loving in fear. We begin to worry about what we would do if that person left us. Or maybe we wondered how we could live without that person? We then begin living in fear willing to do anything to hold on to that little piece of conditional love that we have been given.
I was talking about this with a friend of mine recently and she said oh, that sounds like a make over queen I dated. She was constantly telling her what to think, what to believe, how to dress, where they were going, what to eat, etc. The relationship did not last long because she knew she was not willing to sell her soul for a little attention.
Sometimes we treat love as if it is a scarce resource. It isn’t. If we think about our hearts as the production plant for love, we would come to understand we have the capacity to fill our hearts, our homes, and lives with love. We can fill our lives with enough love for ourselves; those are in our lives, our communities and throughout the world.
So what, if anything, are you willing to do for a Klondike bar?