Miss Alexa’s most recent entry, “Love Never Fails,” had me thinking about love. There are a multitude of reasons why one might tell you that they love you. One of the reasons being that they actually mean it, which, obviously, would be the ideal reason, but this is not always the case, is it? They may be using love as a manipulatory tactic – to extract something out of you – maybe even love itself. “Only say I love you just so I can hear it back.” Something like that. Perhaps they say, “I love you,” because they know it’s something they’re “supposed to say,” with no actual feeling or reality behind it. In the end, whatever reason they have generated, whether they are sincere or not, has nothing to do with us, does it?
I would venture to say that the primary reason for relationships, marriages, and even friendships failing is because of our feeling of necessity to be loved back. This is an incorrect way to approach love; it must be. If we tell somebody that we love them, but they do not say the words back, suddenly, this love we feel has become a source of misery. Now, this love, or what we thought was love rather, has turned into a trace of bitterness or hatred. When another fails to reciprocate the words “I love you,” we wish we would never have said it ourselves. If this is our definition of love, that we only allow its existence when we have received it from another, then let us just do away with love altogether. How many times has the following happened – we chase somebody around, desperately seeking their approval and/or love, only to finally be given that love and approval and still remain empty anyhow? Attempting to withdraw love out of somebody else will not make us love. Is this not what we want? Do we not want to be personify love, to resemble love, to be love, without being bothered if another does or does not love us in return? Love must come from within; we either have it to give or we do not.
Let us not be concerned about who does or does not love us, worrying about if we will ever “find love” one day, or maybe even hoping that love will “return” some time because we feel that we have had it previously. No. Waiting for something to happen first before we access the sweetness of our emotion that we call love is yet another wrong application of it. Instead, may we be completely “selfish with our love.” If everything and everyone around us were as pleasant as possible, then it would be better and easier for us to be pleasant, right? This being the case, there is no reason for us to look at somebody or something with an unpleasant eye. It is beneficial to us if the people around us are joyful – make it so.
Today, tell someone that you love them and go on about your business.
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