A Lesson in Love

“Through loving, I have awakened to love…Through living, I have loved”


Can you ever truly love someone unless you have loved everyone that there is to love? At what point do you feel that you have experienced enough to know that you love? Is it possible to simply ‘love’ someone? Perhaps you can love someone less or love someone more, but can you just love? To love is to be blind to all but your lover’s eyes.


Emotional hurt often manifests itself in physical pain. Like eyes are the windows to the soul, the body is a vehicle of your inner turmoil. It’s so hard to open your heart to someone. It seems like such a natural thing to do, but there is this innate sense inside us all that reminds us of just how foolish opening your heart really can be. Each time you do, and a little piece is torn, it becomes harder and harder to do it again. No one wants to be alone, but what is the price you pay to continue the relentless quest of finding that person who, like they say in the movies, “completes you”. Is there ever going to be such a person? If there is someone that comes along and slots into your psyche, so as to make you whole, does that mean that otherwise you are walking about with a great gaping wound in your side? Help! Should we call the paramedics? No of course not. This is only love, not a physical pain, just an emotional one. But if only that was true.

You wake up each morning in the same cold bed with only the glassy eyed stare of good old trusty Mr Ted to greet you. It’s a horrible, nasty feeling in the pit of your stomach when suddenly you realise that if you forgot to get up in the morning, no one would actually notice. Being single renders you expert in delivering a wide variety of sarcastic remarks and witty comments on the virtues of being just one. As if it’s a destiny we knowingly chose for ourselves after careful consideration of the options. Why should I share my life with someone else? I am strong. I am woman. I can survive on my own. I don’t need someone to tell me that I breathe. However the sad fact is that often this is all just a front for the pain felt in being left alone. How many people, when offered a satisfactory alternative, would really choose to be alone? Why should we be with someone? Because it makes you smile inside, that’s why.

So often people use love as a remedy for something that is lacking in their lives. The mere fact of being wanted, being cared about…mattering, enables you to stand back and finally giving yourself the admiration that you so long deserved. Its not until you actually find this perfect state, that you realise that accepting yourself always comes before loving someone else. Love just gives you the vision to see what was always right in front of you. Why is it that we cannot let ourselves shine in our own internal light until someone else guides us there? Many of us have so far to come in terms of self-appreciation and a sense of worth, but if love is going to help us cross that bridge, then it must be a good thing, right? Love fills you, consumes you, and inebriates you with happiness from the inside out. To describe love, is to imagine warm honey being poured into your veins, feeling every delicious turn of its journey as it courses through your body to the very centre of your heart.

But what if love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? By opening yourself to love, in essence aren’t you opening yourself to betrayal, deceit, disappointment and pain? What’s the opposite to love? Its not hate, its just this horrible feeling deep inside you that never seems to go away. What about those that love, that shouldn’t. Those that are treated badly, neglected, and hurt. It makes you wonder if its better never to love at all than to take the risk that your love will be tainted. In our longing for the perfect love, we must not forget those for which love itself, is an entirely negative experience. True love should never be painful. Bad love makes you want to hide inside your bones to protect your soul. Love provides us with some of the hardest lessons that we must learn in our lifetime. It isn’t all nectar and honey, love hurts, love destroys and love can bring your world crumbling to your feet. We live, we learn, and somehow we must pick up our broken bleeding hearts and face the world again. A little less naïve, a little more cynical, but stronger and more resilient. In every life, it’s got to rain a little.

It seems like such a silly thing, but love in fact does make the world go round…and up and down and inside out and shaken to its very core of existence. When evolution brought about the rise of man, was love created too? Did prehistoric Homo sapiens hurry home to their cave woman, bearing gifts and apologies for staying away too long? Or was love simply created by the greeting card companies as a winning advertising gimmick? Love is a silly thing. It makes grown men weak at the knees and otherwise intelligent woman go crazy. The fact is that love isn’t even a ‘thing’, its just a state of mind. You can’t see love, or be love, or hold love. Its just an expression we use, like some utopia that those who know, hold close to their hearts, and those who don’t, hold in their dreams. The lesson to learn here is that no matter how hard we try, we cannot truly love or be loved until we learn to love and accept ourselves. How can someone else have faith in you, when you cannot afford yourself this courtesy? Would you buy a product that the seller did not endorse? Chase love, don’t make the mistake of waiting until it knocks at your door. Love fully, love deeply, but love with your mind, not just your heart. True love comes to those who are ready.