A lesson I learnt...

There is this line I came across a few minutes back.
"A baby is born with the need to be loved and never outgrows it."

We all want to be loved and be cared for. It is an inbuilt need of every human heart. The biggest disease in the world is to feel being not needed.
So, when a heart is expecting love, rejection hurts. It may be from a parent, a teacher, a sibling, a friend or a lover. Immaterial to what a relationship is, when it matters to a person, rejection obviously hurts.
When you love, and it is not returned, it hurts. And when it happens to a person pretty early in life, he accepts it as a reality of the world, a reality of life. But, this certainly is not the truth.
We are beautiful creatures of God who deserve to be loved.
I have learnt from personal experience and not from a manual on "how to live your life well", that does not matter if someone else cares or not; what matters is if you do or not.
But, this not what I want to talk about here. I want to share a perspective that I developed over time, about one such situation.

I made some friends a few months ago. I felt that they were the best people I had ever met. I could go on and on for hours, if I sat to praise these people. To me they were faultless, perfect people. It continued for until 3 months ago, and then I realized that they were totally human. And realizing this was a terrible experience. I am still friends with some of them, but others are not in my life anymore. Not getting into details of how this rejection came about, but still I was rejected from this group and it HURT.
But, what I realized was that it was God's way to give me a lesson.
The lesson was that, we are dealing with HUMANS here. And, we cannot determine what the other person feels about us, whatever proximity or affinity we happen to share with them. But, we can always decide what we want. We can always decide how we want to be treated. People are just a medium to give away love. And they cannot make you feel it until you want to feel it yourself and neither can somebody make you feel bad or rejected, until you want to do it yourself. If you want to be loved, then you should have faith that it is available in abundance in this world. Its just that the person you are expecting it from does not choose to be a medium of that ubiquitous love. Keep looking, it is just on its way.
Each one of us has to feel responsible for our own lives. We cannot let people who make us feel bad or rejected stay in our lives. It is a masochistic act to keep them in your life.
That is exactly what I did. Though I kept inflicting pain on myself in the beginning thinking about what I had lost until yesterday. But, then I realized that you don't loose a thing until you have yourself. And, fortunately, I still do have myself.
P.S. Though this might sound very stupid, weird, narcissistic and selfish. It might also sound like a "grapes are sour" reaction; but I really think that all the hurt that I felt, was not even worth it. I really have not lost a thing in comparison to what I have found. I have found a treasure of friendship, though I realized it a little late. And, I am lucky to be out of the group now.
If I was ever offered to be the group again, will I join it? No. I deserve better.