What is Love?
This has been one of my biggest question since I can remember. From a very early age the “need” to understand love was stronger than me, it moved me, and it also pushed me into many mistakes. It has taken me many heartaches, many arguments, many nights of self-evaluation, analyzing how people behave, hundreds of books; 30+ years later, I think I finally got it: I know what Love is. It was not easy, I mean, to understand Love after all is one of the hardest things I have done in my life (in a few more sentences and I’ll tell you what is even harder than to understand Love). And I have come to understand as well that not many people really know what Love is.
We have been told that true love is unconditional. “Love” associated with “unconditionally”, this is one of the most toxic things we have been teached. We have been indoctrinated to believe that to love is to allow or accommodate and even summit when we do not agree. That it is to “love” the person just like they are (that sounds good but a bit dramatic and condescending) To unconditionally “love” someone is a very heavy thing, it brings to the surface many “but what if” and it is confusing. It makes us conflicted and it divides instead of unite (although its aim is the later); that cannot be what love truly is. To me, growing up, this did not make any sense. My little mind could not grasp the concept of unconditionally in the way it was being explained and portrayed, and much less sense in the way I was being raised. That led me to want to experience Love, and that in turn led me to the hard life lessons. I quickly found out that people expect us to love them thru betrayal, thru lies, to hurt and pain. They mess up things time after time and expect us to love them even still. Why is that? We all have a need to feel like no matter what or how many times we messed up; we are loved. But somehow it sounds completely different when is others expecting us to love them the same way, and it seems different because we are faced with our own internal conflict.
I mean, for many of us, not even our parents loved us like that. They expected us to behave a certain way, they got mad at us for making mistakes when we didn’t even knew what a mistake was, many of our passions and talents went dormant because it was not something that could be accommodated in our parents busy schedule. Many of our questions were answer with “because I say so”.
“Love me unconditionally, take me with all my traumas and accept and protect me from my triggers” and “you cannot be like that, you are toxic, your past traumas are your responsibility, don’t dump your s*** on me” do NOT go together. We cannot expect to receive what we cannot give and if we can give it and is because of love, then we give It with out condition. And that is not the same as unconditionally (although they sound alike). To love with out condition, is to love the person without expecting anything from them; to love unconditionally, is to tolerate everything in the name of “love” (and that is BS).
About 7 years ago I understood something that made me wonder, could this be it? and decided I was going to put it to the test and like I have done with everything else, I used myself as guinea pig. (When I was growing up, there were these little cards that would read Love is…, they were everything. I mean, if you were in love you had to give one of those, it was the definition of love after all. Everybody got one in Valentine’s Day, and being the “love nerd” that I am, I have always wanted to write one (this is serious, people, this is kind off one of my goals), here it goes. Love is… (I did it!)
Love is… UNDERSTANDING
Didn’t expected that one, did you?
But, its true. Love is understanding and that is all there is to it. Remember above when I said I will tell you what is harder than to understand love; understanding what needs to be understood to be able to truly Love, is even harder than to understand Love itself. I know my English is not perfect, so let me explain. To truly love another, we need to: understand our inner workings; this is to know ourselves, know our triggers, be conscious of our own traumas, be open to learn and change and be compassionate with ourselves. Then we need to understand how the other person operates; to know that other person needs, likes and dislikes, understand their past, their traumas, their upbringing, what happened during their childhood, their history, past relations, what they eat, their hobbies, talents, everything. All this, is what makes Love. When we understand them we can truly see them for who they are and what they need as a person. That is the only way to truly love someone.
We all want love, and boy, that “unconditionally” sounds good, but in reality, can I really expect someone to love me like that? It means I am asking from another human being to forget about their own needs and the needs of everybody else whenever I feel like to, and only take care and worry about mine. That is a bit narcissistic and egocentric, isn’t it?
If you feed chocolate to your dog, you may love the dog, but you are no good for him, unless you learn how to take care of him, you either kill him, give him a life of pain and illnesses or the dog runs away. If you don’t take time to learn about the dog and his needs, who is the toxic one?
We should know that all living beings have their own needs, and we should not need to be reminded that just because my last dog had very specific needs, my present dog has the same. We all have different needs and desires, and we all have our own love language.
We do the same thing with those we “love”, if we add the unconditionally part, it sounds even more comical.
We all have different love languages, so we need to know the person, to be able to understand how they behave and why, their coping mechanisms, their triggers, how they were raised and everything that makes that person in the present moment be who they are, that is true love.
When we understand the person, we understand even their mistakes, because is not about what I would have done, is about the knowledge and emotional tools that person has; is an understanding from their perspective and not ours. When we understand, we can honestly think about the other person best interest. But if we don’t, we are no good for that person no matter how much we may think we love them. We are actually hurting them.
We may think we are in love or that we know what love is, but do we really?
We are born with the need for love because is how we learn to cope with our environment as we grow. Love feels good and as children we need to feel good. Love is a constant in everyone’s life, so many things that “feel good” can makes us think what we feel is love. The thing is we forget that somewhere along the way, we mixed things up and we no longer know what “feels good” really is. After all the traumas, good is whatever keeps us alive and let us deal with our day to day.
We need to take our Ego for a walk, talk to it, give it some love so we can make it accept that just because we “love”, doesn’t mean we are good for the other person needs or that others have to feel the same or know what love is.
If you want your plant to survive, you need to read about it, know if it needs sun or shade, how much water. But no, we take the plant home, put it by the window because it looks “pretty”, then wonder why it die on us. What if we take the plant home to later know that it needs to be watered at exactly 3 am and that it needs to be out in the sun every morning at 5 am for 30 minutes; would you still love the plant? Would you do what the plant needs to survive?
When we understand needs, we can make honest decisions about what is right for us. There is no need for resentment, we understand our needs and we understand their needs, we understand what needs are, we can let go.
To understand the other person means that we can love them and not be together. It means that we can be happy for them no matter what happens.
Is the same in greater scale, to love you family, to love their family, to love your land, your animals, to love your community, your country, to love other nationalities, to love the world; whatever it is that you love, to genuinely love it, you need to understand it first.
To love without understanding is: to “like”, be dependent of, enjoy, be addicted to or have passion for the feeling you get when you are near that person, but it is reliant on keeping that feeling intact; that cannot be called love and is definitely not unconditional.
Understanding this helps us to define our relations, to better know ourselves and the person we are with. To live a life more align to our true self needs.
What is love to you?
May this help someone
Blessed be
Alchemist Eyes
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