Love
Although it makes the world go around and is wonderful to experience, love is sometimes hard to feel. When people in our lives are challenging, loving them becomes a decision, one we would prefer to ignore.
Love is both a verb and a noun, but I prefer the verb, as its’ in the doing that shows what we really think. Love in action is apparent in many forms, doing what we don’t want to do or being there for others when we have so many other pressures on us. What we do, how we choose to manifest love tends to be judged. This becomes a responsibility at times that can weigh heavily on us, one that is not always that welcome.
What is not usually discussed is love being misrepresented.
If you hear the words I only said/did/acted that way because I love you, is a case in point. (I am not referring to parents here). Love is not control, neither is it manipulation. Love is a universal feeling we all strive to feel and receive. But what if we turned it on its head and chose instead to stop looking at how others love us and focused on how we love them? What if it was about us giving instead of taking and doing it with the highest of integrity? What if we placed it above being right or being the only one that knows the best course of action?
Could be worth giving it some thought.
Love does not live in egos; it is not arrogant or the best at anything.
Love is usually found in humility and selflessness.
The popular school of thought is that we are all worthy of love and that we should feel it over anything else, more often than anything else. As we don’t live on a movie set or in a love song, it can feel almost impossible to do; partly because we don’t feel deserving of it, or are suspicious of it, which segues nicely into the most important aspect of love – self-love.
Self-love is a difficult experience for most of us, simply because we have been raised to believe loving and honouring ourselves is selfish and wrong. That is what trips us into feeling bad and valuing ourselves way less than what we are worth. We are here to experience love alongside feeling worthy, not the other way around. People who love themselves have both humility and a self-belief that is obvious. People who value themselves don’t need to tell us how good they are at anything, nor do they need to be the orator or the person who insists on changing our minds. Usually how we see love, is based on how we have experienced it. Having self-love as a core part of who we are makes us vulnerable and susceptible to being judged or attacked, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
What if we stopped focusing on how much other people love us and focused on loving ourselves more? Imagine if we could begin to feel better about ourselves, our successes, our failures, our experiences – basically all of it? After all, it’s widely accepted that the better we feel about ourselves, the more likely we are to feel better about others. Seems like a potential solution for everyone.
Authentic self-love does not need to compare, it is enough, it values what is and manifests itself incrementally throughout the day and night. This may be in the form of kicking off our shoes, pouring a glass of wine and watching the game, instead of cleaning the kitchen.
We need both self-love and loving others and our challenge becomes doing justice to each.
Love is defined in so many ways, it is impossible to cover it all. Some familiar ones are being listened to, sat with, even having someone turn up at the perfect time. A good way of feeling more love in our lives is to give it. Give it to ourselves firstly and then to others.
This is not as difficult as it sounds, and can start with
Observing a situation
Noticing what we can say or do that might show love
Appreciating someone we normally take for granted
Noticing what someone did well that helped us
Being kind
That’s it really.
Who doesn’t need love in their lives?
I’d be fascinated to meet them