When we decide to put down our defenses and learn to accept the unacceptable, a new intention arises. We’ve often described love as a feeling or an action, but I don’t think it’s either of these. Feelings and actions are both expressions of love, but neither causes it. As a result of our thinking, love has become a conditional awareness reserved only for the few who deserve it. This dualistic thinking gives rise to the opposing belief that some people are undeserving of love. In the past few months, I’ve come to realize that love is the acceptance of imperfection, whereas we’ve given it a definition that one needs to be perfect to be loved.

The resistance to imperfection causes us to work with an agenda. We need to ensure that our effort goes into fixing problems. What happens if we act without a need to control the outcome? We work from a space that people are rarely attuned to because we tend to be focused on the problem. Only when the problem is fixed can it be loved. We operate on conditional love, expressing acceptance only if it aligns with our ideas of how someone should behave based on compatibility and shared beliefs. We haven’t reached the stage in our evolution where there is a consensus that we can disagree and still love each other. Pain can be felt, yet love remains. Love has nothing to do with our opinion. This type of love may be the hardest, but I know we are fully capable of it.

The Intention of Boundaries

Love doesn’t mean you no longer have boundaries. It means that your boundaries are no longer rooted in fear. Instead of believing that I need to control this person, I can easily say that this person doesn’t honor me. I can step away from this person and still care for them. I don’t have to cut them off completely, as is custom in our culture. Instead of needing justice, I can honor where they are in their life’s journey without needing to be involved in it. In this way, I am honoring the autonomy of myself and the other person. Acceptance isn’t about always saying yes but saying no without cruelty and judgment.

Love has never been a feeling because if it were, we’d only associate it with positive feelings like happiness, connection, and peace. As a result, we’d be in opposition to feelings that didn’t bring pleasure. I’d rather think about love as the absence of judgment. In this way, loving oneself doesn’t need to look like a stock photo of friends hanging out. Love also looks like sitting quietly with grief. Love isn’t judging ourselves for the fear we feel, nor shaming ourselves for liking something that isn’t typical for everyone. Through the media, love has been glamorized as a grand gesture, but quiet moments alone are also expressions of love. Love doesn’t betray the aspects of ourselves that others may find appalling.

No Change Needed

Love emerges when you no longer need the idea of change. This is why we spent so much time debunking the myths about the need for change. True love doesn’t present itself until we understand that there is no need to control or mold someone into our image. We love all situations the same. All is perfect. Every fragmented event in our lives is merely a puzzle. We may not like the pieces that were handed to us, but that doesn’t change the fact that they still fit together to reveal a larger picture. There’s a good chance that we will never see this bigger picture, but if we trust the bigger picture, we can trust the pieces as well.

Love Remains

Love is forever present. It’s not a phenomenon that only happens when the mood is right. Love is like the sun. The brilliance of the light can only be covered by clouds. Even when the sky is grey, it doesn’t mean that the sun is no longer present. We need to be aware of the clouds so that we can notice the sun behind them. The clouds come in the form of pain, fear, and being guarded from both. Love doesn’t disappear because we disagree with life. Love reveals itself under the resistance that we have towards it. Drop the resistance, and the sun can shine as bright as ever.

Still, it’s hard to believe because we’ve made love logical. We’ve given “if/then statements. If I feel safe, then I’ll love it. If they change, then I can love them. True love requires nothing of me or others. True love requires no reason. I love you, and that’s the end of the statement. Yet, we tend to leave out the “because…” Once we start to realize that love is not a feeling or an action, we can begin to remove the barriers that prevent us from experiencing love. True love is the recognition that there is no separation between me and you. Anything that separates, differentiates, categorizes, or compares us is a barrier to love.

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