Make Your Home a Sanctuary of Love

* Be available, so as to keep family ties strong. Do things together as family.

* Set aside time for your family. Young people measure their parents' interest in them in proportion to the time they spend with them.

* Kindness is the oil that smoothens the many rough spots you come across in child-rearing.

* Children like to see a good example in their parents, practising what they preach.

* Teach your children to have sympathy for the poor.

* Develop each child's personality, mainly by teaching them to take responsibility. Don't hand them everything 'on a platter'.

* Understand the true meaning of discipline. Let your authority be motivated by love. Be considerate but firm when you have to be.

* Spur the creativity of your children. Give them chances to dream dreams, to unlock their imagination, to awaken their internal and external senses to the people around them, and to wonders of Nature.

* Instruct your children to lead constructive lives.

Source: Not available

Little Nuggets-43:

Love has inspired many wonderful literature throughout the world in all languages and love has been the dominating theme in innumerable novels, poems, short stories, movies, drama etc. Love sustains one in the face of insurmountable difficulties, despair, sorrow and unbearable suffering. For the sake of love, people have sacrificed even their lives. Selflessness is a divine quality and love makes one selfless. This ennobling and elevating quality of love has been the central theme of many successful writings - Source: Unknown

Little Nuggets-42:

Love's nature is to grow, to expand, to extend to infinity, to eternity, to immortality. When impure, it is limited, narrow and body-centred. But as it expands, it transcends all narrowness and impurities - Prof.K.Subrahmanyam (Values in Education)

Little Nuggets-41:

Buddha attained perfection by becoming unselfish. So is every savant. The sure way of becoming unselfish is through LOVE, the gift of God to humanity. It is God Himself seated in the heart of each person - Prof.K.Subrahmanyam (Values in Education)

Little Nuggets-40:

Knowledge is Power: Love is No Less. When love and knowledge of the right kind combine and harmonize, the result is something marvelous, miraculous. It is the elixir of life and philosopher's stone compounded into one. It enlivens and ennobles, delights and divinizes all that comes into its field and fold. It stirs up compassion in the heart, invests compassion with reverence, and imparts dignity to service. It reveals itself in unconditional giving and service, it is the awakening of wisdom without disturbing faith.

Excerpt from 'The Life of Swami Vivekananda' by His Eastern and Western Disciples

Little Nuggets-39:

Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness - Sydney Smith

Little Nuggets-38:

Kindness is the insignia of a loving heart - Anonymous

Little Nuggets-37:

It is due to the absence of mother's love that people develop all sorts of unhealthy complexes. The tragedy of life starts with the absence of mother's love. Karna despite all his glory, was a tragic hero because he was deprived of mother's love - Prof.K.Subrahmanyam (Values in Education)

Little Nuggets-36:

Giving is never a drudgery. It is a pleasure. It is an expression of love, sweet love... It is not haughtiness and egoism but modesty and self-sacrifice that should accompany a deed of love - Professor K.Subrahmanyam (Values in Education)

Little Nuggets-35:

To love is to serve and to serve is to sacrifice the narrow self. As we love the higher, the lower is dropped or renounced or sacrificed. The greater the love, the greater the sacrifice - Professor K.Subrahmanyam (Values in Education)

Little Nuggets-34:

If we cannot love the person whom we see, how can we love god whom we can't see - Mother Teresa

Little Nuggets-33:

If you start judging people, you will not have time to love them - Mother Teresa

Helen Fisher and the Anatomy of Love

I came across a very interesting article of Professor Helen Fisher on Love during one of my visits to Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madurai, several years ago. There, in the Library of the Math, this fascinating article caught my eye. As I did not have any paper, I managed to get just a few pieces of paper and jotted down the material from that article that impressed me. On returning home, I must have kept the bits of papers safely somewhere and then must have totally forgotten about them. Today while clearing my papers, I could get hold just one piece of paper, on going through which, I could recall the excitement on reading the original article. Unfortunately, the head, the tail and most of the body have been lost; just one piece in between remains. However, the remaining one piece is still impressive.

Then I surfed the net and got hold of more interesting material about Dr Helen Fisher and her work on the Anatomy of Love.

First I shall reproduce the scribbled material from the surviving bit of paper:

“What Helen Fisher saw fascinated her. When each subject looked at his or her loved one, the parts of the brain linked to reward and pleasure – the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus – lit up. What excited Fisher most was not so much finding a location, an address, for love as tracing its specific chemical pathways. Love lights up the caudate nucleus because it is home to a dense spread of receptors for a neurotransmitter called dopamine, which Fisher came to think as part of our endogenous…………….” (Sorry, there ends the scribbling).

The information gleaned from the Net are given below with links:

Dr Helen Fisher, an Anthropologist at the Rutgers University, USA, has been doing research on human behaviour. She has been recognized internationally as a leading expert on the topic of Love. The three phases of love, according to her, are: Lust (intense longing), Attraction (an action that tends to draw people together) and Attachment (a bonding progression).

For detailed study, just click:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Fisher_(anthropologist) (Biography and details about her work)
http://www.whatischemistry.com/about/about-dr-fisher-interview.php#10 (Interview at Whatischemistry.com)
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=SPxmHKLwj3MC&dq=Helen+E+Fisher&prev=http://www.google.co.in/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3DHelen%2BFisher%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch%26meta%3D&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1&cad=author-navigational (Why We Love: The Nature And Chemistry Of Romantic Love)
http://chemistry.typepad.com/the_great_mate_debate/dr_helen_fisher_1/index.html (The Great Mate Debate: Dr Helen Fisher)
http://quotes.zaadz.com/helen_fisher (Quotes by Helen Fisher)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/love/ (The Science of Love – BBC)