My realisation about love
Love: we need it, we want it, we long for it, we can’t live without it. Our very emotional survival depends upon it. And it goes both ways: Loving and being loved.
Loving and receiving love is one of the most difficult things in life. One that causes us most heartache and difficulty. Why is this?
I believe it’s so hard - and this is my own experience – because we make our love towards ourselves and others dependent on conditions.
“If only I was smarter, slimmer, good enough, up to the mark… I could love myself as I am, I could like myself.”
“If only my partner, friend, colleague wasn’t so annoying, moody, controlling, loud, selfish, I could love them as they are, I could really like them.”
So we make our love dependent on certain things rather than accepting the truth that each one of us is flawed, imperfect. This doesn’t mean letting ourselves and others off the hook. No, it’s quite the opposite. It’s saying ‘Yes’ to ourselves and wanting more for ourselves, e.g. being a kinder, more loving, patient, trusting, engaged, open, curious etc. person. It requires us to start where we are, with who we were and explore what’s possible every day with love, respect and patience.
I used to be very self-critical and harsh on myself, and not feeling good enough most of the time. It had a detrimental effect on how I experienced myself and others. Because I didn’t like myself very much, I felt mostly disconnected from myself and others, isolated and often lonely.
The truth is: Love doesn’t demand, love is present. Love just is.
It is also true that as relational beings (something we often forget), the more we are in loving and kind relationship with ourselves, the better our relationships with others are. This has definitely been my experience. As my attitude started to become a more loving one, I began to notice that my relationships with others became more trusting, open-hearted, closer, easier, more loving and meaningful.
Another reason why it is so hard to love and be loved is beautifully expressed in this line by Iris Murdoch, British poet, author and philosopher.
Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.
It’s the recognition of the other’s otherness which is the very foundation of love.
And yet, this is where we often go wrong by making assumptions and having unrealistic expectations of the other. I believe it comes from our religious cultural heritage, from the ancient Golden Rule that is found in most world religions (particularly in the West) and which states:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It means, treating others as one wants to be treated.
The Golden Rule mistakes the reality of the self for the only reality, taking one’s own wishes, desires, and longings as universal and assuming that the other shares those in exactly the same way and not seeing that someone else might want, need, long for something very different.
Loving hence requires an un-selfing, a remembering that we are all unique and that there are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives, each with its singular longings for beauty, goodness and gladness (Maria Popova). At the same time what connects us all is our common humanity. We all experience difficulties at times - grief, anger, despair, and we all experience ease at other times - happiness, joy, contentment.
Here is how you can begin to love and be loved more fully:
1. Bring awareness to the attitude you have towards yourself. Do you love yourself as you are or do you like some parts of yourself and reject others, judge them and beat yourself up for it? If you do, you will notice it in how you feel about yourself and life, most likely uneasy, dissatisfied, low, sad, depressed, unhappy…
2. Begin to imagine what it might feel like to be content, well and happy in yourself and doing this with a loving, curious, patient attitude towards yourself, remembering that you are imperfect and human.
3. Notice your assumptions about other people and how perhaps you think you know others when in fact, you don’t. We hardly know ourselves.
4. When with another person, see whether you can take them fully in, seeing them as a unique person with a different background and upbringing, with different needs, wants, and longings. How does it feel? How does it change your relationship to them?
When I realised that my sister suffered as much as I did from loneliness in our childhood and that she experienced her and our upbringing very differently from me, my very conflicted and unloving relationship with her, changed completely. Today, we are still not close but we respect and love each other for who we are. It’s been one of the major breakthroughs in my life.
Love is the recognition of another person’s integrity and truth in a way that makes both of you light up when you recognise the quality in the other.
- Robert Graves (British poet)
Coaching Immersion Days in Nature
Spring is on its way. Bookings are open again until October for my Coaching Immersion Days in nature on the stunning Seven Sisters south coast or in the beautiful Surrey Hills. If you love the outdoors and long for some time and space away from your day-to-day work-life routine to enter into a deeper conversation with yourself and how your life is going, then why not book an initial chat to benefit from a Coaching Immersion Day.
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