Love

Love

What is love?

I am not sure I know the answer to this question. I am not sure anyone really does. Webster says that love is "an emotion of a strong affection and personal attachment. Love is also a virtue representing all of human kindness,compassion, and affection —"the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". Love may describe actions towards others or oneself based on compassion or affection

OK so I read this definition over and over and over again after starting this post and something started to really settle into my brain-"the unselfish......concern for another."
Unselfish part-that is the part that really garnered my attention.

Unselfish
Hmmmm
Unselfish

Lately,
I have found myself on a journey that I really had no intention of going on. Hmmm, I don't suppose anyone has ever felt that way before :) but I digress. I have been on a journey and it has been a most unpleasant one to say the least.
I can see that our most unpleasant of journeys typically can be avoided if only by choosing to follow our intuition about people and situations, and to take emotions out and to judge situations and people with complete objectivity. It is amazing how ugly people and situations can seem when the lights are preverbial turned on.
On this journey I have realized some truths about myself and about life and mostly, well about love.
First, I am here to learn a lot of very difficult lessons and I have no idea why I signed up for this school some days and other days I have amazing things that happen that remind me why I am here.
Second, life is a school of hard knocks. Trying situations, grief and loss will not go away there is no going around these lessons, you have to go through them-which sometimes, no most of the time, SUCKS.
Third you will eventually get to a point where you start to questions the very sanity of the word, LOVE.

I have a family. You have a family. I would venture to say that most of us would not make a claim to that being a perfect intitity, am I right?
I think many of us have pasts that haunt us to this day, things we wish would could change about our childhoods the way we grew up, the way we were parented, and maybe even the siblings we were given.
I think however, that we may have chosen to surround ourselves with these challenging individuals. WHY, do you ask? Good question, I find myself many times asking that SAME question.
But truth is growth comes from pain, it comes from questions, it comes from being bigger than a hurtful situation. Growth comes from breaking through the hardness of difficult situations.

And then the mother of all questions arose- HAVE I ever been really loved? In my entire life has anyone ever REALLY, REALLY loved me? I am not sure, it is a surreal thought to stop and ponder this-I thought this through and really pondered this question for days and I meditated on this and read book about it......and then as plain as day once I started to blog about it another thought popped in my head-HAVE I EVER REALLY LOVED? What of course I have, I have loved......I have loved.....wait what is love again....."unselfish....concern for another" Hmmmm, have I ever really loved-maybe the truth is I have to learn how to love first, so I can recognize it another person when I see it!!!!



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Seek Within Ourselves

There are times when negativity over powers any amount of light that is in our lives. We give focus and waste energy on things that overpower our minds with negative thoughts. Not only does the body suffer from the stress, but so too does the outlook on life in general. While in that negative moment we tend to not only miss what the challenge can teach us but we also allow other peoples opinions and judgements to derail us from what is truely important. We lose faith for a hopeful outcome, and most importantly the faith in ourselves. It is always important to know that it is in our greatest hours of desperation, disbelief, saddness, bitterness, and anger that we find more about our individual "soulful" energy. It is in these moments that we aquire individual strength, new outlooks, and a greater perspective in whole. They teach us to humble ourselves, realize our humanness, and seek advice from within. Going "within" ourselves truely proves that we are "never alone" even in our darkest moments. We are apart of something bigger than ourselves, and apart of a greater good. It teaches us to seek knowledge beyond a text book, and helps us to make wiser choices for our future.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.