How Do I Love Thee

Anyone who knows me knows that I believe love is the single most important thing one human being can offer another.

At 45 (soon), I can honestly say that I have offered it freely, accepted it graciously (don't overthink it) as a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, aunt, mother, friend, lover, partner, wife and questioned it rarely - until now. I don't question it's existence, it's power or it's purpose. Let me explain...

The last few years, through divorce and other family issues (aren't there always issues?) I have learned that someone loving me isn't enough and shouldn't be enough to have them take up my most precious resource - time.

I have learned to stop allowing myself to get distracted by a profession of love. To look deeper and harder at how and why I am loved. To watch the behaviors and language and ask myself if the love being offered allows me to honor who I am and what I believe in.

Not all love is created equal. Not all love is healthy. Not all love is meant to last and most importantly, not all love is love, though it may have a lot of the same trademarks.

A lot of emotional needs masquerade themselves as love, the most prevalent of which I believe is fear; fear of being alone, fear of being abandoned, fear of failure, fear of unworthiness, fear of fear.

Like most people, my kids have been the easiest people for me to love. This may be because I understand them almost as well as I understand myself. It may also be because they are still relatively young. I know that my love for them is unconditional. It will exist long after I do.

Not everyone believes that conditional love is love, but I do. It's important for everyone to know their limits, to decide what they will and will not tolerate infesting their world. If I can answer the how's and why of the love others offer me, I can decide if I want to open their gift. Do they cheat, lie, dismiss, ignore and call it love? Do they want to control, manipulate and demean someone else?

Perhaps you sense pessimism or bitterness, I have neither. I am eternally optimistic and incredibly open to whatever gift of love the universe brings to me both conditionally and unconditionally. I have been well loved and am grateful for those who love me and those who I have loved in my short lifetime.

To me, love is so much more than a word or an emotion. It is a set of values, a code of conduct, a mountain with many plateaus many of which we will not reach with everyone who crosses our path. Love is an opportunity to both offer and accept the gifts of humanity, an opportunity which sometimes comes with a price of admission and other times is beautifully free.

Either way, I don't believe time spent loving is ever wasted. It connects us to the universe and her people more securely and more profoundly than anything else can. It teaches us who we are and who we are not and if we allow it, through love's joy and pain it helps us to grow.

Forgiveness

One of the hardest things I am learning to do is forgive myself. Not because I maim and torture puppies, drown kittens or am generally a horrible person.  Not because I cheat or steal or live my life with a careless disregard for others, but for sometimes taking too long to see the truth; for allowing fear to get in my way; for sometimes unintentionally hurting people I care about.

That's how I am starting this year, with a need to forgive myself.

Perhaps my expectations of myself are too high for wanting to be able to step outside who I am and already be who I am in the process of becoming.  Perhaps I need to remember that the mistakes and the consequences that come with them are the process that makes the change possible.  Perhaps I need to remember that my intentions are almost always set with only the best outcome in mind, even if that's not the outcome I reap.

If I was watching a friend encounter what I am going through, I would generously tell him/her that they were being way too hard on themselves. That they did the best they could at the time and if that's not acceptable then so be it, but it's not a friend, it's me.

It's hard enough to watch people hurt, harder still to know I'm the reason for it.