What is Love, Really?
I think this has been said in so many different ways:
“You cannot love someone before you love yourself.”
“You can’t give what you don’t already have.”
Even the golden rule, “Treat others the way you wish to be treated.”
The way we move through the world is so much about reflection. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we see ourselves in everyone around us, and how we treat that person is telling of how we respond to our reflection in them.
Love, I believe, is the same, just deeper. We come in contact with someone's love, and things inside of us are revealed. It could be desire, jealousy, longing, pain, excitement, hope, joy, etc. It could be something we’ve never felt before.
Whatever it is, their love is revealing of us.
Their love is a recognition of our love, this means it is not their love that lives in you, but your own. Their love has come in and shed light on what’s already there, and the rest is up to you.
Sometimes we run and hide, and sometimes if there is nowhere to hide we push that person away because their love is too bright and it hurts our eyes. We don’t want to see all of what we’ve hidden.
But once the light has revealed the shadows' secrets, there is no real turning back.
We must choose to recognize our own love, the way their love did, or destroy their light in our lives and try to continue on like we cannot see.
If we are not ready to see, we will always push away, at some point, what others give us if we don’t also give it to ourselves.
Because what they are ultimately giving us, what we are always giving each other, is a reflection of us. And we cannot push away the reflection without pushing away the light or mirror that revealed it.
Until we are ready to accept and see ourselves, we will forever reject love. And we will forever only choose the love that reflects us in a way we’ve already accepted if we like that reflection or not.
So it stands to reason, in my mind, that it is not the love someone “gives” you, but it is the way in which their love reflects you.
The love I have with you is only true because of the love that’s already in me. It is not your love which lives in me or my love which lives in you, but it is my innermost loves recognition of the innermost love in you. Let it be, that we can never lose said love, because if it is true that what I have with you is a recognition of what’s already in me, that even when you are gone, the love is still here, even if unseen.
These ideas on love are unfinished, as thoughts on love may always be. So, there may be a part two…
With the love in me,
Sarah.