An essay on Love: my thoughts on love and how we can heal through love
Love will always be worth pursuing no matter what.
Love is much more the love you can find in romantic relationships or between your family and friends.
Love starts within ourselves.
Ourselves is always the starting point of anything in life: a dream, a choice or a decision. Ourselves is the most important and challenging relationship of all.
Is the relationship that it will never abandon us even when things get pretty grimm; is the relationship that we fear and love most at the same time; is the relationship that will catch us at the some point in our lives even if we have been trying to avoiding it so badly; it is the relationship that requires the most inner strength and wisdom of all. It is also the relationship that we should most cherish, feed and nurture. No one can do that for us except ourselves.
If love was solely external and dependent on the other that we have identified as the object of our love, we wouldn’t feel miserable in a marriage, in a job or a family gathering. As soon as love would rip us apart we would rise up confidently.
However, as we all know life is not black and white, disposed of feelings and emotions, hopes and expectations and past experiences. This to say that if love was that linear we would just simply fall in love and happily live ever after like in a fairy tale. But, because love is primarily and most importantly, an inner thing than an outer thing, it slightly complicates the dynamics of feeling, being, receiving and giving love.
For love to be successful it requires the courage to create dialogue within ourselves first and then with the other person. It requires the courage to not abandon ourselves and our inner strength when things go wrong or cold, when we lose hope. It requires the wisdom to identify our own personal boundaries and when they have been crossed, and be brave to communicate this to the other person, still respecting their own personal boundaries too.
It requires so much of ourselves as well as a strong sense of self and self-respect that before love reaches others it needs to reach and fulfill ourselves first. Only then we can start forming what we called a healthy, supportive, caring and respectful love that continues to honour the value of our own lives at the core of everything.
Even when love was broken, fell apart or didn’t work, it may have brought us more distant from the other. Nonetheless, it has definitely brought us closer to the first object of unconditional love – ourselves.
When it comes to romantic relationships – the ones we most hope and die for at times, let’s be honest – the love for the other should be an expansion of the great love we already have for ourselves or we should have. Is the love that will add even more value to our own life. Is the love that will tell you ‘go for it, I believe in you, you will be amazing’. Is the love lived in the present but looking together forward into the future. Is the love that challenges you to be a better person every single day and respects your dignity of life. Is the love that is able to show raw vulnerability with the right dose of toughness. Is the love that continues to create joint dialogue and victory. Is the love you have attracted because you have finally believed you truly deserved it.
So, yes love will be always worth pursuing no matter what.
