You know, I love you! We all know the words. We all think about LOVE. The L word. We want it. We search for it. Yet in my transitional year I am learning that it is all around us. I keep stumbling across writing from various religious traditions suggesting that we let it in, let all else go, act in love.... Love is so much more than the traditional 'romantic' version of love. I am beginning to believe that love is the opposite of the dark side. It is all that is good in the world and in people. Kindness, honesty, service to others... this all grows from love of oneself and love of humanity. Environmental awareness and committment to social issues stems from a love of those around you, loving the beauty of the world and wanting to eradicate that which is damaging or cruel.
How is it that you love? Do you love unconditionally? Are you willing to open your heart to being a loving being knowing full well that to act in love means that you have the greatest opportunity for gain, but also the greatest opportunity for hurt? When we are loving and acting with love in our hands/head/heart, we are our purest selves. That powerful and physical feeling we get when we gaze upon our sleeping children.... LOVE. That feeling of connectedness with the earth as your paddle dips silently into the water as the canoe glides along... communion with the positive energy of the earth (LOVE!). We are so afraid to say that we love people. That we care. People are so afraid to accept it. What crazy creatures are we! Perhaps our dogs have it right when their eyes light up to see us and their whole body wags with happiness. As if you could say it was anything BUT love!!
Ahhh, I care for others too easily perhaps. I am cut deeply too often. Yet I continue on extending that care, honesty and emotion. And still there are those I am afraid to share my love with, to remind them of it. As they are stuggling like myself. My problem? I am a black hole of need for love, the problem being that I myself am terrified to let it in. To just open up to it. To be unafraid of the what may be... or what might come.. to just let the beauty of the now engulf me and let the lesson unfold as it will. My inner child screams for acceptance, for love, for confirmation that she is good enough and smart enough and successful enough and lovable. While I may know academically that I am all of the latter, my emotional self still cries to hear it. Have it. Hold it.
I don't think I am much different than many others. I am just more willing to look into my dark shadows and admit the realities. Acknowledge where my past has brought me, and the binds it has tied on how I am able to open myself to the universality of love. I can give it freely, but take not of it easily. We all hide. We all have an inner child. We all have to love that child, and teach her how to stand confidently and accept what may come.
