On Others-Love.

Promise, this is my 'last' entry on Love for awhile. I know I've hit my quota.. just bear with me on this last entry. The other possible title for this was, "On Two Kinds of People".

I spent way too much time trying to figure out what love is. Self love, value, etc. Yes, ad nauseum. I'd like to believe that the reason that I did so was because it was the month of February. A time of Love, VDay, and all that sweet, that nasty, that gushy stuff (Hova). The nice thing is that I figured out the answer to my riddle. From the voices that surround me, my family, my God. What is Self-Love. It is about awareness, acknowledgment, acceptance and anything else that seems to start with an "a". It is all those things and the ineffable. But the point of this entry that I'd like to focus now is, what is on the other end of the spectrum. The love for others. 

We are, as I see it and what I have been told, is made to love. We'd like to argue that we are also made to be loved but the only problem with that is that the latter is dependent on others. So what do you do? Continue on, as you were doing? What were you doing? Genuinely caring for others or sitting there, relishing in the idea that you are being loved by x, y, z people. Now, don't get me wrong, both things are good. To love and be loved are just glorious. They feel so good. And through our lives, we lie on different parts of this spectrum. Switching back and forth of giving and wanting adoration and attention. There are some, and at times it is our ownselves, that sit more towards one end than the other. And the problem is, the crux of the conflict is, when the person that loves to give gives to another that simply loves to receive. 

My aunt told me that there are two kinds of people in this world: those that offer their love and those that only want to receive love. But if love is an honest exchange, an equal transfer of one self to another. Wouldn't this ability to love serve its own purpose? That by loving others we in turn fulfill the need to be loved. This global symbiotic relationship. And yet, what would we do if the world was filled with only those that want to be loved. What happens then? Major fail. 

Now I'm not saying go whore out on the world and love everyone. The reality is, not everyone deserves you. Because. There are those that will extract every part of you, given the opportunity to do so, because they want that thing from you. Not you. But that something you can give them, that thing you offer them so willingly. Whether it is their ego stroked or a pat on their back. The hand is far more important to them, than the face of the person before them. So, be selective. Because when you decide to love another, as a friend - as an acquaintance - as a lover, it should be in its most genuine, authentic form. Without the need or expectation of something in return.

We have this heart, this emotional component, these tear ducts, the ability to have sex for joy, these arms to comfort one another. And yet we question if we are capable of love? Don't you get it? We are love. Created from it, inspired by it, downtrodden when it all goes to shit. So, if we are made to do this. To make action of this. Then, let's do it. We all want love, but let us do so in a form that is honest and enduring. And hope that by doing that, doing what is most natural to us, to love - that we in turn will be loved the way that we offer it. The Golden Rule. Freely, with joy and no need to fill an ego or a lonesome heart. 

So I end with this wish, like two dots connected by a line, that we as people construct a direct thread of compassion and sincerity, in the name of Love.