What Is Love?

I had a different post planned for today, but this morning I read an email from My Intent promoting a 14 Day Self-Love Journey that intrigued me enough to see what they were doing. The day one journal prompt was "What is love to you? What is your intention with this self-love journey?"

The more I thought about it, the more I felt compelled to blog about the first question...

"What is love to you?"
"What is love to me?"
"What is love?"

For much of my life, I subconsciously equated love with possession and jealousy. Love was a weapon. Love was scary. Love was vulnerability. I also thought love was only love if it was reciprocated. Love was an emotion. Love was dreamy and romantic and giving and kind... Love was something I had to earn. Love was the reward I'd get for achieving perfection. Love was always... out there, just beyond my reach. 

A few years ago I decided to live from a foundation of love. I wanted a more solid foundation for my life than the insecurity and self-protectiveness I'd built it on. I decided to rethink my definition of love...

The first thing I did was look at some dictionary definitions of love. I quickly decided those were inadequate for both the way love had lived in my life and the way I wanted love to live in my life. They were accurate just not quite adequate.

So I started looking at how I wanted love to live in my life. I'm not talking about woo-woo supernatural love solves everything kind of thinking because, frankly, while I believe love is essential to positive change, it isn't enough all by itself. It's a good starting point, but we still have to do the work. As I started redefining love and working to live from a place of love, I felt a little unmoored. Just asking the question opened me to finding a way to define love that made sense to me though the journey would be long and rocky.

As I worked through this journey, my friend, Kelly T., reminded me that "Love is not a passive verb...."  I liked that idea so much, I posted a gratitude statement about it.

But, where did that leave love in connection to all those other ways I defined love?

As I practiced both living from a foundation of love and practicing gratitude, my life began to feel more positive in many aspects, but it also forced me to face things in my life that didn't work. It forced me to see that certain things don't exist well together. Living in fear diminished the capacity to live from a foundation of love.

I struggled to release the concept that possession and jealousy were necessary for love. "Mine, mine, mine" and only "mine" had always been drilled into my head by society's expectations. Yet, possession and jealousy aren't about a mutual choice to be together. Love is about choosing to be together day after day and understanding that it is a choice and that forcing someone to choose me because they are "mine" isn't love.

Love that comes via obligation isn't love, and it does no one any good whatsoever.

When I started to look at the love I put out into the world and compared it to the love I gave to the people in my life, I was appalled. The love I put out into the world had no expectations. It had no strings. It had no possession or jealousy attached. The love I put out into the world intended to empower. Yet with the people I loved the most, I felt an incredible need to protect that love, to control that love though I wouldn't have called it control at the time, to own that love, to demand reciprocation. But that's not love.

I began to wonder why I couldn't love my spouse, my family, my friends, and even my cats with the same kind of love I offered the world. So I started exploring being grateful for those who chose to be in my life and releasing those who didn't with love. I started setting boundaries that protected my self-love without trapping others. I sought to give a love that empowered those I loved. I worked hard at it. Still, there are times when I lapse into old habits or when my new attitude toward love is met with skepticism, rightfully so given both my history and the ingrained, subconscious attitudes we all hold toward love.

Kelly had a point. Love is an action verb. When I choose to live my life from a place of love, it's about more than feeling love toward others. It's about interacting with the world in a way that promotes love and brings kindness into the lives of those around me. It's about understanding that it's not always easy to live from a place of love, especially when faced with hate and vitriol. It's about understanding that I first have to love myself before I can love others. It's about accepting that people don't have to be what I want them to be to deserve love. It's recognizing that anyone who demands I conform to their expectations just be loved isn't interested in giving love. It's about wanting someone to be happy even if that means they choose to not be in my life. Love is seeing each other as we are and choosing to move forward together, or apart as life necessitates. At least, that's what love is to me today...

Tomorrow, my definition of love may evolve yet again, but what I do know is that we don't learn what love is by watching movies or reading books or listening to others. We learn what love is by living and loving and accepting love into our lives. We learn what love is by opening ourselves to vulnerability and loss. We learn what love is by standing next to someone who has been hated their whole lives by the very society in which they live for no reason other than they were born as they were and bearing witness to the pain in their lives without judgment. I didn't truly learn what love was to me until I decided to live from a place of love and to release the fear that kept me moored to the pain of my past including my self loathing.

I discovered, at least for me, defining love is a lifelong evolution toward living my best life and contributing to the world in a way that has a positive influence in creating a world where love truly conquers hate and equality is the norm rather than an aspiration.

So, today, when I look out at a world filled with rage and fear, I take a deep breath and whisper love into the abyss hoping it finds someone who needs it...