Love?

Love?

We enjoy extremes in our culture. Yes, No. White, Black. Day, Night. Delicious, Gross. Good, Bad. Up, Down. Life, Death. Love, Hate.

Some of those are opposites that are absolute, if you’re not one, you’re the obvious other.

So if we’re not being loved, does that mean we’re hated? Of course not, but then again, who’s to say?

What does it mean to love? What does it mean to be loved?

Emotions come from the heart and we act on them, think on them from our head. It’s something we simply can’t help, one of the few mercy’s we will always be at no matter how elevated or spiritual we believe ourselves to be. So when we break up with someone or someone passes, does that mean the love never existed? Does that disqualify, negate all of our experiences we had with those individuals? Are our moments we so clearly connected, felt deep in our chest, saw with the brilliance of our eyes, are they suddenly fantasy? No. That simply isn’t true. The connection happened, the moment occurred, the memory exists within you and you can’t change that, we can’t change that. Sometimes we want to, sometimes the past no matter how sweet or loving, stings with bitter remembrance. The person/s might have hurt you later on, maybe they betrayed your trust, maybe they got a new friend, moved away or married someone else. Maybe this person is a parent and they abandoned you, maybe you dont talk to them anymore, maybe anxiety fills the space where joy used to overflow.

But you loved them. At one point or another, you felt the energy, ecstasy, adrenaline driving spill of love fill your being. Why are we so quick to deny that? Why can’t we let ourselves love without limits or conditions?

In my experience…

We’re afraid.

Terrified.

Deer in the headlights waiting for the unpredictable vehicle. Truly it’s scary, but why? Because we don’t want to be hurt, because what if we love someone and they don’t love us back?!

And?

So what if they don’t?

Do you suddenly stop feeling the love that was so powerful and real because one person decided not to match your energy?

Would you stop breathing simply because someone else decided they didn’t like the oxygen level in the room?

Sounds a little silly, but I bet you’d keep breathing, huh?

So why is loving purely, someone or even ourselves, any different?

What is love?

Love is a life force. It’s the first cradle after a new born is set in their mothers arms. It’s the first delicious food we ever tasted that we swore we’d eat forever. It’s the laughter that continues until your belly aches and tears are streaming down your face, yet you can’t seem to remember the joke. It’s the silence of experiencing a moment in time where everything just feels right. Love is in everything we get to participate in, in this life. Even the less glorious highlights. Waking up and taking your first deep conscious breath. The sip of coffee that sends sparks to our cells to wakey-wakey. The homemade lunch we remembered to prepare the evening before. The curling up on the couch after a hard day, watching our favorite show or reading a good book. The warm shower that relaxes and resets our bodies many complex systems. The bed we lay in or place we choose to finally rest for the night.

But life isn’t always like that is it?

Some nights we can’t sleep and wake up groggy with a massive headache. We forget to study for a big test and the anxiety starts to eat away because if we fail this one, we’re in big trouble. Sometimes we forget to confirm a meeting and our boss berates us. Maybe we’re alone on our birthday and it feels like we’ve been forgotten. We got stood up on a date we spent hours preparing for and waiting days in excited anticipation. Does that mean love ceases to exist? No. That’s just called life.

It’s apparent to us all that we don’t want to be forgotten about, really who would? To each and everyone one of us, this life is ours, it’s our narrative, it’s our story and it’s our world. So why shouldn’t everyone love us?

Do you love everybody and everything you experience from the moment you were born? We all know the answer to that.

While we can’t control other people we can control the majority of what makes up our being. There are 13 billion people on this planet and every one of them is living in their own worlds. Every one of us has likes, dislikes, preferences to how we experience every day life. It’s what makes us beautiful and the world a constant portal of wonder.

I have a sincere case of wanderlust for the world, I desire to know, experience and see everything I can before my time comes to say goodbye. Even then I still won’t remember everything I experience with love, maybe at some point, but not always in the moment. Place me in a desert at 105 and I guarantee you that I will be an over done potato feeling like I’m about to die from heatstroke; not the most loving headspace. Place me in a cabin in snowstorm with the interior temperature at 12 degrees with a warm fire and some blankets and I’ll blissfully fall asleep to the sound of howling wind; talk about a fairytale moment. Take anyone else, one of the 13 billion people on this planet and do the same and I guarantee you that they’ll have a completely different experience and feeling than mine.

The conclusion of those examples is that we don’t have to force ourselves to love every moment of our lives, but that also doesn’t mean love isn’t there, it just means we aren’t open to seeing it, feeling it, leaning into it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that because we are who we are and we shouldn’t expect or be expected to be anything else, unless we choose to be. It’s our life.

So what is love again?

Love is not transactional. Love doesn’t need perfect conditions to exist. Love does not judge or give to the select few. Love doesn’t have a start date or an expiration.

Love just is. It exists in us, around us, through us.

The more love we give, the more we receive from the universe. There is no such thing as true pure love that disappears after being given, it merely goes back into the world and seeks us when we are ready to receive its powerful blessings of it’s beauty all over again. And again. And again. Infinitely.

We are love. Love is each and everyone of us.