What is Love? Pondering the Age-Old Question
I hope you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day yesterday! To me, Valentine’s Day is no longer about just romantic love. It’s a day to spread love wherever you go and to all the people that matter to you, including yourself. It’s something that I was reminded of when I re-read a post from my old blog, written exactly 6 years ago. Here is the poem that I had written back then:
My Dear Sons,
If you need to belittle others
To make yourself grander,
You are not yet capable to love.
If you think that denying your tears
Makes you a brave man,
You are not yet man enough to love.
For you define yourself
Through what you do to others.
For nothing takes more courage
Than to face yourself.
My Dear Daughter,
If you need approval from others
In order to approve of yourself,
You are not yet ready to love.
If you believe that changing others
Will improve your own life,
You are not yet mature enough to love.
For you must love yourself
Before you can love others.
For nothing will change
Until you change yourself.
Yet, My Dear Children,
You cannot learn to love
Through my words.
You came here to experience
Love for yourselves.
So go out there and
Get your hearts broken.
Don’t let fear stop you
From making “mistakes”.
For only experience can help you
Discover your true capacity to love.
For you must understand what isn’t love
Before you can understand what love is.
Love Is…
I agree with the poem, but the funny thing is, I don’t think I truly understood my own words back then! At least not at the same level as I do now. I definitely kept trying to change others looong after I wrote those words!! In the 6 years that passed, I had experiences that forced me to recognize my own hypocrisy again and again.
But I think that’s the point that I was trying to make. That you can never be completely ready to love. If you wait until then, you will miss out on the opportunity all together. You HAVE to experience love for yourself in order to understand it. The more you experience love, the better you understand love. The better you understand love, there’s more love to discover. Love is something that you’ll never fully understand in this lifetime or even in ten.
If I was forced to answer the question, “What is love?”, I would say, “Love is everything.”