Photo by Shlomi Nissim
Aside from exchanging chocolate hearts and love notes with my crushes in grade school, I’ve never celebrated Valentine’s Day. While I wait in line to buy my groceries, red roses + heart shaped everything stare at me, begging me to take them home. I resist the urge to believe the passing thoughts that whisper “I’m a bad wife”, and continue on my way.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about celebrating love and showing the people in my life how grateful I am to share time with them. But like usual, I want to go deeper. So I ask myself…
We’ve been sold the idea that love is fairy tales, beauty product promises + romance. Shiny, tiny sweets nibbled under soft lighting + gentle music. We’ve been sold, and for the most part, we’ve bought the package. But it’s a set up for failure. When things don’t stay sweet and soft forever (and they never do) we think something is terribly wrong. We’re bad, we’re broken + we better buy more, whatever it is.
I’ve never met anyone whose life unfolded like a fairy tale. Whose romance resolved all of their hardships. Who didn’t have to work HARD to master a challenge. I’ve never met anyone without a shadow. Nor anyone whose latest cosmetics suddenly granted them with perfect, unshakable self-esteem. I’ve never met a couple whose relationship was suddenly and forever void of struggle because they exchanged little heart shaped candies that said BE MINE.
Hey, it might have helped create rapport, intimacy + closeness. The gift of freshly picked flowers might have been just what was needed in the moment to create flow. That is love… but it’s only a very tiny part of love. If you get fixated on the rainbows and puppies face of love, you’re in for a major wake-up call.
This is nature. Another set of waves is coming. Big, ones.
Being ‘wanted’ is an incredible feeling, but life moves in waves + tides. The person we count on to make us feel loved is going to get busy. Life will require them to put their attention elsewhere… even for a time… and what then?
Emptiness. Lack. Self-loathing creep back in. Let’s say you really do end up in a fairy tale + your lover never ever ever has anything else in life to attend to besides you (yeah, right!). Have you ever met anyone who knows exactly how to love you, what to say and when? I’ve lived in many states, a couple of countries, and both the northern + southern hemispheres, and I’ve never seen that happen. With anyone. Ever. People need your guidance. They don’t just need you to say “do this, do that”. Show them how to love you by loving yourself.
Your primary job here on planet earth is to love yourself.
It ain’t a simple task. Life will keep pushing on you with more + more intensity to get you to wake up + give yourself all of the love, attention, space + pressure that you need.
Love isn’t about picking and choosing parts of ourselves to accept. Love is bigger than that. Way bigger. Love doesn’t discriminate, fix, change, or tinker. Love sees people, places + things just as they are. Love doesn’t add anything or take anything away. Love isn’t ownership. It is inclusive reverence for the life within everyone + everything.
Loving is any action or pause we make that expands our perception so we can include more + more of reality into our view.
Love is about embracing our wholeness. Our likes + dislikes. Love includes everything. Everyone. Everything. There is nothing that is ‘not love’. Love is the attitude of creation. The force that creates us, and the large arms that hold every experience. Pleasure + pain. Birth + death. Expansion + contraction.
1. What do I love?
2. Why do I love it?
If you ponder it long enough I bet you’ll drop below the surface + your answer will surprise you. I bet it won’t be a list of beautiful, easy things that make you comfortable. I bet it will be a list of things that make you feel challenged, invigorated and alive.
So in the spirit of loving you…
all of you…
your lovelies + your uglies…
Every weekday leading up to Valentine’s Day an inspirational guest will be writing about something challenging that they have learned to love. I am over the moon with excitement that I get to share their stories with you. So stay tuned to the frequency of LOVE.
Big Love + Many Blessings,
Syndee
I found this posting to be very moving. I knew one should communicate their needs and what makes them feel loved, but I never knew that the surest way to show someone how to love you is to love yourself and from them seeing how you love yourself they can see how to love you. This makes me think about some wisdom I acquired recently, which is that the more I understand myself the more I understand others. It makes me believe that more I love myself the more I can love others. It's really amzing how everything always begins within, with us. It makes me think that as one loves themselves more it benefits all who is around them. For a long time I had the belief that it was selfish to love oneself, but after this posting I realize that the more I love myself and learn to understand me the better I can love others. Which is beautiful.
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