Love, like death and taxes, is one of the subjects that
we are all familiar with. Everybody loves somebody sometimes, as the song
goes. But while love can make one deliriously happy, it has also
caused more broken hearts, pain and misery than anything else,
war included.
Why is this? And, more important, does it really have to be this
way?
Love is what we are made of. It's one of the things that holds the
universe together. Without love we cannot be, and without us love
cannot be.
The universe came into being and gave our physical existence form
and shape. Together we make it what it is. How could we do that it
it weren't for love to bind us together? How could we see the sun
shine, how could we watch the world turn, if it weren't for the
love that defines us?
All of this may be true... but if love is so wonderful, why is it
doing such a job on some of us?
Well.. Frankly, it doesn't. Think about it: every time we get hurt
in love, it's not the love that hurts us. Instead, we do that
ourselves.
When we love someone and that person does not return our love, we hurt. When a relationship is severed because we can't live together the way we hoped or expected to, we hurt. When we trust someone and find our trust abused, we hurt.
In a way, it all comes down to expectation. We expect (or at least
hope) that the needs of somebody else will be compatible with our
own. And we're frequently disappointed. And that can hurt.
The pain also stems from the fact that love involves completely
opening up to someone. In order to love someone and allow that
person to return our love, we make ourselves absolutely
vulnerable. In a way, trust is the most difficult (and essential)
part of love.
So... if we trust, we may find ourselves betrayed. But if we don't trust, we surely betray ourselves. Lack of trust means lack of love, and lack of love means that we deny our own existence. Trust means vulnerability, and vulnerability involves the risk of getting hurt.
Is it a coincidence that love is the subject of over 95 percent of our songs? Is it a coincidence that love is a key element in movies, novels, poetry and soap series? No! Love is the very core of our being.
Few things have so much power over us. It is one of the 'core'
emotions. (Love and fear are, after all, the basis of all other
emotions that I know of. All other emotions are just forms or
combinations of these two.)
Just as love may be our prime mover in life, it can also make us
bitter or sad like nothing else can. However, that bitterness is
just pain talking, and that pain has been inflicted by ourselves,
not by love.
Love simply is. Love is not a crutch to those too weak to stand
unassisted, love is not a wet fire cracker. And love is not
something that only happens to someone else.
We cannot live without love, just as we cannot live without existing. Living without love is a paradox, a contradiction in terms. Life without love cannot be. Even if we feel unloved, we exist because of love. Love gave form to our universe, love caused our bodies to come into existence.
It is easy to get hurt in love. Whenever that happens, don't give
up on it. No, that does not mean that you should hang on to a
relationship that cannot be... It means that love is much more
than just a relationship that may or may not work out.
Do not confuse love with pain. Love and pain are not two sides of
the same coin. They're two entirely different things.
Love in itself is pure and good. But we often confuse love with
our own purposes, our own expectations, our own reality. Love in
itself is unconditional. True love never expects something in
return, never expects a reward. True love just is, and cannot be
anything else.
However, since we are imperfectly aware of our own essence, our own reason for being, we often confuse love itself with our own need to be loved. And that's where the pain starts. Love just is, but pain is caused by need.
One of the best definitions of love I've ever seen comes from the late Robert A. Heinlein. "Love", he wrote, "is a state of mind in which the happiness of someone else becomes essential to your own happiness." Much of this is true. Many of us know how painful it is to see a loved one unhappy while we're unable to do something about it.
But it's all too easy to get confused here. Our love for someone else also creates our own need; the need to see somebody happy. So we often tend to project our need unto the person we love, and then we think that whatever it is that we need is also best for them. Parents are masters at this. Mothers always knows what's good for you, even if they don't. Fathers often have dreams about what their children should become, or how they should grow up, and are sometimes sorely disappointed if their children decide to follow their own dreams instead of theirs.
Some of us completely loose track this way of what love is all about. We start to 'mold' our loved ones into a picture of what we think they should be, we start telling them what to do, and sometimes things get completely out of hand, and the result is anger, fighting, and sometimes even abuse or worse. In our confusion, we inflict the pain that we tried to avoid in the first place, and we cannot understand what happened, or why our loved ones have changed so much - because this is how we see it. We are projecting our needs onto someone else, but we are not aware of it. All we know is that we feel let down by someone whom we trusted. And that is where the pain starts - the pain that we inflict on ourselves.
How to get out of this situation? The only way I can see is by
realizing (and making each other realize) that our love for
someone should be just that - love. Love should create no
need, no obligation, and certainly no demands. We may love
someone - but if our loved ones need to go their own way,
we should let them, no matter how much we'd like to hang on to
them.
Of course people can get hurt going their own ways. Of course it may
make them unhappy. But that happens to us all as we go through life.
And who are we to decide about the needs of someone else?
Loving someone is not easy. But then, nothing worthwhile ever is.
So don't be afraid to love... and be prepared to do whatever is
necessary to make it work. But never forget that love can make us
hang on to someone, while what we really need to do is to let go.
So give your love freely... but do not be afraid to let go. This
is the only way for our loved ones to be truly free, the only way
they can be truly happy. Which is what we needed in the first
place in order to be happy ourselves.
Letting go may be the most difficult part of love. It is also the
most important part. To hang on to someone is need. To let go is
love.
Only by letting go we can truly love, unconditionally, without
expecting something in return. Only by letting go we can give our
loved ones the freedom they need to be truly happy themselves.
Only by letting go we can be free of obligation. Only by letting
go we can truly give, instead of taking.
Let go. And love freely. Give. Expect nothing in return. Eventually, love and happiness will come back to you.