Red everywhere. Roses and hearts and chocolates and cards, reminders on each corner you turn to. Love day is here!
Capitalism has found a way to hook it's claws into every corner of our lives. Love is no exception rather a lucrative emotion. We are all subjects born with the innate desire to seek it.
Weather you are floating in a sea of infatuation, confused in the thickness of the power struggle, settled into blissful communion, valentine's day concerns you. It's true for you too, single person, while you are being made to feel like a sock without it's pair, you are bound to ponder about love when valentine's day comes about.
I don't think there is such a thing as figuring love out. I believe all we can ever do is be in awe of it's depth, figuring out new layers of it on every page we turn. Misunderstanding it is by design and something we are meant to do before we can yield to it's true nature. Love, in my eyes, is meant to be wondered about, uncovered, suffered and enjoyed until each of us takes our last breaths and hopefully do so in it's presence.
But that doesn't mean we should shy away from unpacking the lessons it delivers at different stages of experiencing it. That way we spend less time repeating the drills and more time in a state of constant enjoyment of it.
I've been curious about love for as long as I can remember. Wore my heart on my sleeves as they say, broke hearts and got my heart broken enough times. Surrendered to it, resented it, fought against it, used and abused it. All in a subconscious effort I'd like to think, to unravel and crack open this sweet mystery which I believe is our purpose as human beings. I'd like to share with you what I've found.
1)You're not a floating partial piece
When they say 'find' love, I would like to believe what they mean is uncover it within yourself first, then share it with someone who has done the same. Unfortunately, we use that term so very unconsciously to suggest that love is only found in that other person who is walking around life housing the reanimating jigsaw pieces of our souls.
This truth, I wish I knew first and foremost.
This frantic search for that certain someone with the purpose of completing you is behind most of the desperation, aches and disappointment that surround love.
I, too, spent many years regurgitating the notion that a man with such and such qualities was to bring me happiness and make sense of my existence. This kept my attention on everyone else but myself, constantly judging and gauging instead of pursuing to find and accept who I am.
The best way to love is from a place of wholesomeness. The sooner we realize our own potential for a state of self-sustaining completion, love becomes a choice two content individuals make out of their free will to reap the joy of pairing.
2) You can't give what you don't have
Try this the next time a homeless person approaches you, give them what you wish you could give but don't have, and hope they walk away proclaiming your generosity.
I'm here to tell you what you already know in almost every other area of your life but probably don't apply to your love life.
Most of us are walking around the world expecting and even demanding we get what we want but lack the capacity to do that for our own selves. How patient are you with yourself? When was the last time you told yourself you love you? If you makes a mistake, how do you deal with you? Do you embrace change within yourself?
Chances are, you will treat your lover in the same mannerisms.
Practice loving yourself the way you want to be loved. That makes asking for what you want easier or on both of you because you demonstrate the what, when and how together with the worth you know you posses.
3) Don't sweat it, live it!
Good things take time but you already knew that. Also, an outcome-fixated mentality leaves little to no room to soak in the pleasure of process.
We live in a world that promotes instant gratification, one that tells us to remain in the grip of a final goal. As a result, we make the mistake of dealing with love as we would a new year resolution.
Love is not in the feel-good instantly business. Neither does it come with a insurance as it encompasses another human's free will. No wonder I hear many complaining about true love being non existent!
No matter how many commonalities you share, you are still two individuals with distinctly separate experiences, aspirations and outlooks in life. The synchronization of two beings can only be achieved through time and it's better when not sought after but rather allowed to happen naturally.
4)You attract what you need, when you need it
Make no mistake, each ordeal with love is the drill you may not realize you need, until you do. It is the classroom in which you learn the hardest of lessons. This makes it impossible to deem any affair of love a waste of either party's time. There is always a purpose to the madness, a basis for the pain. I imagine the universe uses love to deliver messages you may have refused to pay attention to. Almost like a last resort. Probably because you won't yield, lay bare, break open, surrender in vulnerability like you would when you are in love.
5) Got flaws?
How many times have you judged a lover in ways you wish you are never judged by them?
It amazes me the level of acceptance and understanding we seek from each other and the simultaneous reluctance we suffer from in offering the very same.
We say we want a lover to look further than our bodies, search for and admire our inner beauty but we have a list of physical attributes we fail to see beyond when it comes to others. We crave for the kind of love that isn't about materialistic gains but deep down, we zoom into how fat or not their paychecks are. We seek vulnerability but are hesitant to offer it.
Hypocrisy dies when we accept flaws and are comfortable with not being perfect.
5) The myth of never-changing
I don't think I am exaggerating to say what most fear about love is the other person changing. I am also certain that this is one of the biggest misconceptions we harbor about it.
The ego craves constants as it needs predictability in order to survive. Love operates differently. In your lover and also in you. Nothing in the universe is immune to evolution so you might as well focus on accepting it in your lover while allowing it in yourself.
I've found love to be sweetest when in flow with the only thing certain in life, change. Witnessing another human being choose to love you as they adapting to new normals, adjust to variations of phases of time and grow. That is what I've found to be the epitome of bliss.
