Love Unrequited

I’ve thought a lot about love recently.

Not in a longing or reminiscing way. Not in a way that makes me sad or jealous. Just thinking. I get really happy when I think about love.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the people in my life that I have love for, as well as the people in my life that love and cherish me. Keep in mind that those are not always the same people.

There are so many kinds of love. There’s the obvious kinds, the young couples with soft eyes for each other, sipping coffee and walking hand in hand through crowded places as if no one else is there. I love watching those couples. Then there’s the old couples, I mean the really old ones, the ones who have been together longer than your parents have been alive. That love is unyielding. There’s also familial love, mothers and daughters, brothers, fathers and sons, grandmothers and newborn granddaughters. Although it can sometimes be strained, that love is honest.

My favorite kind of love is the unrequited kind. Not unrequited in the sense of a person one-sidedly lusting after someone else. I’m talking about a love that is so pure. Pure because it asks nothing, expects nothing from another. Love that loves from up close and from afar. The kind of love where one person can truly appreciate and understand another person in their entirety, without feeling the need to have possession over them, without needing exclusivity. This love does not need reciprocation, because it does not love someone for the way that person loves them back. It just loves them.

There’s this girl that I follow on Twitter (@EboneeDavis) and she posted something not long ago that I really resonated with. She said, “When you remove expectations from love suddenly your love becomes infinite.” This is something I’ve understood for a while but couldn’t seem to put into words. It’s also something that I wish more people could understand.

I’ve had a few experiences with people who’ve misunderstood my love. It’s not that they were selfish or controlling, they just didn’t understand me. I find that I tend to love people quickly and deeply-- even those that I see as friends-- because I feel like I understand them more than most people. And when you understand someone so well, all their quirks, passions, insecurities, how could you not love them?

However, people tend to interpret this love as something else. We aren’t used to someone loving or appreciating us without the expectation of something reciprocal, something intimate, something exclusive. And so we mistake appreciation for infatuation.

What I wish is that people could begin to appreciate and show love to the people around them, not in hopes of reciprocation, but because people are beautiful and they are something to be understood and loved. We are all here on this planet, all 7.5 billion of us, and a lot of us share very similar experiences. We share experiences of loss and heartbreak, of passion and perseverance. We share ideas, dreams, and interests. And yet I don’t think we ever try to truly understand one another.

Ellen once said that it’s good to be loved, but it’s profound to be understood. I’d like to go a step further and say that it is even more profound to actively try to understand others. To see them. To see yourself in them and to love them as you love yourself because I promise you when you start living life with this filter on things get infinitely brighter.

Remember, the only person who can truly limit the amount of love that is in your life is you. So make it all if you have to. And keep your heart open for the love that comes back around.