The real meaning of love
Love is possibly the most misunderstood and misused word in the English language. Anyone who has false perceptions or beliefs about the meaning of love will believe almost every lie that whistles past their ears.
There are some who go to extraordinary lengths to obtain love from another person and then there are others who have suppressed their feelings and emotions to a point that makes them completely unavailable to love anything or anyone including themselves.
What is love?
Love is an unconditional gift of acknowledgment, acceptance, value, care and respect. While we may show our love in different ways to our children, parents, partner, spouse, friends and colleagues, the principles of love are always the same. No one has to do anything or be anything to be valuable, to be cared about or to be loved.
Love is not something anyone has to pay for emotionally, mentally, psychologically, physically, sexually or financially. It’s not something that can be traded, something we have to earn or something we have to sacrifice anything for. Love is not controlling, overpowering, crazy, confusing, or painful. It’s not something that grinds anyone down, or keeps them off guard. It doesn’t create feelings of anxiety, depression, low self-worth or low self-esteem. Love doesn’t hurt.
Loving someone doesn’t mean condoning or tolerating abuse or bad behavior and doing so is not loving or respecting ourselves or the other person. We can love others and not love the way they behave.
When we love anyone that we have any false beliefs about or false perceptions of, then the person we love doesn’t really exist. What we love is an illusion.
Love is constant, it’s not here today, gone tomorrow and back the next day. It’s not jealousy or dependency. “I need you, I can’t live without you, you belong to me,” is not love, but need.
When we believe that loving someone means their life is more important than our own, we set ourselves up for a lifetime of self-deprivation. No one’s life is ever more important than anyone else’s.
The three little words I love you are very powerful, but they are just words. When someone says ‘I love you’, it doesn’t always mean they do. This doesn’t mean anyone needs to define themselves as being unworthy or unlovable. People who don’t love or care about others are occupied with false beliefs and perceptions of their own, which has little to do with anyone else.
Most children love their parents and want to believe their parents love them but sadly, some parents can’t love their children. This is not because their child is unlovable, no child is. Every child born deserves to be loved. When a parent or carer doesn’t love a child, it’s because they have false beliefs and perceptions of their own and can’t emotionally see the child they have the valuable gift of spending time with.
This may be a harsh reality for some to face and accept, but it brings with it the freedom to live beyond their parent’s limitations and to be able to truly love who they are, to be loved and to be able to love others in a real and meaningful way.
Some people spend a lifetime trying to appease or impress people who can’t love them while overlooking the people in their lives who don’t need to be appeased or impressed because they do love them.
We don’t spend time with anyone we love because we have to; we do it because we want to.
At this point, we can question who we love and who loves us and think about how it feels. When we believe someone loves us and they don’t, or we believe someone doesn’t love us and they do, we will feel discomfort or pain. It’s nature’s way of letting us know so we can be truly free to love ourselves, to love others, to be loved and to love the world we live in.