Lee Ann López WagnerI’ve always questioned what love is and what it should feel like, riding a never stopping roller coaster that takes me to places I wish I never knew but also to places I wish for every soul to know. I’ve managed to feel love in different ways, but is it really a feeling, an emotion or life’s undeniable force?
I guess at first it’s easy to label it as a feeling, something you can’t describe, you just “feel” it. When was the first time you felt it? Are we born with it, do we feel it since we start to breathe or does it manifest as life unveils it to us?
I definitely don’t have the ultimate answer, but I believe love is a force greater than ourselves that shows itself as soon as we are able to acknowledge it, even though we might never know what it is or what to do with it.
Love for me has had different manifestations based on a simple (or not so simple) question: Am I consciously willing to go beyond my own expectations and values for another human being?
My first manifestation was my family. I knew what love felt like not because I gave it, but because my family showed it to me, that determined my first expectation of love, any less than my family love and unconditionality just wasn’t love. Being raised in a flawed but loving family made me see happiness and “good feeling” only as a result of how permanently you were there to support and understand and accept each other no matter what happened. This unconditional love made me value it less when others don’t meet my expectations of love or how I feel love should be manifested.
My second manifestation was love at first sight, I was 18, that tingly and butterflies in the stomach feeling, perfect to every extent, a connection bigger than I can ever explain and I never felt again with anybody else, but my expectations were too high, perfection was a must and hard work was not how love should work. I didn’t want the pain, the distance or the uncertainty, so I let it walk away, never knowing until recently that love takes all of that and more.
My third manifestation of love came through my children, the purest love no doubt, but my fear of doing it right sabotaged for a long time my ability to receive love as it came, I just wanted to give through perfection and society standards a demonstration of what I was capable of doing out of supposed love for the, but it was actually fear and not love at its best that ruled that relationship for years.
My fourth manifestation of love came to me in despair, when I felt not loved at all, I realized I was missing the love for myself as the first step to know how to love others. I realized I have received so much love in my life, but was unable to see it, live it, feel it because I was too busy trying to give it back.
I can’t assure I can actually share with you what love is, but as of know, I see love as a beautiful gift every human being receives and is able to share, and its force is augmented and multiplied only in one’s capacity to give and receive at the same time.
I really suck I think at giving and at receiving love, but I do have come to realize that to live in love, takes courage, and to really embrace it we can all do the following:
- Recognize that we are love
- Allow ourselves to receive it humbly and gratefully
- Love back in the purest form: acceptance for the other without judgment and expectation
- Keep on being and sharing love even though you don’t feel it reciprocate as you imagined
- Forgive ourselves for the mistakes, and forgive others for theirs
- Repeat
Love is a set of actions spoken and unspoken that builds a bridge, a connection with other human beings, so powerful that it is capable of rebuilding the world as we know it.
Love is not a curse, love is not a burden, love is not something you trade, it’s probably something (feeling, emotion or force) that we live and moves us forward through happiness and pain, through hard and easy, we just need to say hello and talk to it.
Love teaches us a lesson every day, as long as we are willing to listen and act upon it on behalf of the good of another.
May we encounter love deep inside and manifest it always, don’t hold it back, let us allow ourselves to find growth in, through and because of LOVE.