Yeah, yeah…I hear you! Not another damn blog about love!
Pfft…suck it up, because yeah, here it is, another blog about love! And seeing as it is the first blog that I’ve written, you’ll just have to indulge me! Lol…or say goodbye and click your way off. Noooo…don’t go! I need all the support I can get, being a rookie blogger and all!
So, what is love, really? Does anyone know for sure? How many times have you believed yourself to be in love only to look back on it years later…or months, for that matter in some cases…and wonder what the hell you were thinking? Hmm. Yes. Been there, done that!
“Love
Neither can you learn
Nor can you practice
Nor can you dispense with it
It is just a flowering”
The wise words of Sadhguru, who also said, “The English expression, “Falling in love,” is significant because no one rises in love or climbs in love. You fall in love, because something of who you are has to go. If not the whole of you, at least a part of you should collapse. Only then there is a love affair. You are willing to destroy a bit of yourself for the sake of the other. It essentially means someone else has become far more important than yourself.”
Now, I do not profess to be an expert on the concept of love…anything but, but I have learned over the years that we tend to see love as a means to an end. What do I mean, you ask? Well, for one thing, how many of us use the phrase “I love you” as a way to get what we want? Be it for affection, a quick romp between the sheets or a relationship that is nothing more than an empty framework that we use to stave off loneliness.
Every human being is capable of falling in love. It’s a natural emotion to feel or believe you feel when you’re attracted to someone. If only we didn’t allow ourselves…our love…to be guided by philosophies, ideologies, friends and family opinions…well, by life really.
In many ways, we only have ourselves to blame for falling in and out of love all the time. Let’s be frank about this. Was it real love? Could it have been? Did you, as Sadhguru said, destroy a bit of yourself for the sake of another? Did you offer yourself to another unconditionally? Because, can it be real love if there are conditions attached?
Unconditionally. Without conditions. Unbound. Without any reservati
ons. I believed myself to be in love twice in my life and neither time did I feel the desire to offer myself, my heart, to either of them, unconditionally. So now, looking back I know I confused what I believed to be love in the first instance with infatuation…he was one sexy looking guy after all, which I married and had two children with. But it didn’t last, because there was a disassociation between us that I never noticed until it was too late. The second time? Well, respect and companionship do not love make…that much I learned as well.
So, before you shed tears of pity for me…don’t! It has taken me a lifetime, but now I have found love. Real love. Unconditional love. How do I know for sure this time? Hmm…let me try and verbalize this for you. I have found love within my heart through a connection of my soul. It’s just there. I wasn’t looking for it when I stumbled. I remember falling and I fell…hard. The ground gave way. I am now floating on a weightless cloud, my heart encapsulated within a treasured cocoon, knowing it takes no effort at all to love like this. I don’t have to think about it. It’s just there, it has become…me. It pulses through my veins with every beat of my heart.
It’s ensconced within the chambers of my heart, within my soul, and I offer it without reservation, unconditionally. Did I lose a part of me in the process? Yes, I believe I did, because he has become more important to me than my own self-preservation. My constant need to be in control.
Is there a risk? Yes, there is, but I believe I get back as much as I am giving and therein lies the balance. For what is life if you’ve lived without ever having really loved? And as the song Nature Boy popularized by Nat King Cole with lyrics by Eden Abhez so eloquently states:
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return.”
I’d love to hear what you believe love to be and whether or not you have found your unconditional one. Share your views with us in the comments field below.