Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word
When we awaken to authentic love and real intimacy with ourselves, we will end the ways that undermine our worth and quest for freedom.
Without an ethic of love shaping the direction of our aspirations, we are often seduced, in one way or the other, into a belief that does not support our true nature and highest potential. We must learn to release the grip of control and allow love to move freely.
If love is freedom, is limitation, then the thief of such liberty?
In M. Scott Peck's book, The Road Less Traveled, Peck defines love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth."
When I reflect on my adolescence and young adult life, I discovered I was searching for a blueprint of love and outward validation. What was not a clear and easy path; I learned love is not something to be awarded or obtained outside of us. To understand, we must look both inward and outward with a curious and courageous eye – awareness at the forefront of our process of love and practice towards freedom.
As an adolescent and adult, my limited view and molded definitions of the love for the opposite sex was colored with despair, disappointment, and culture conditioning. My eye on the prized fairytale and happily ever after.
When the affection of my first crush was not returned with the excitement and eagerness, I had hoped for; the disappointment that followed became the seed of doubt and denial unintentionally planted and routinely watered—harboring any chance of pure love for years to come. The thought that this young boy did not reacquaint my fondness and was not a direct judgment on my appearance or personality was a concept too young to grasp. Thus, the story drafted concluding I must be unworthy of love, began.
Searching for iconic love and my knight and shining armor to ride up on a white horse and "save me," I plotted and sneaked my way into relationships. I bathed in the darkness of temporary pleasure and satisfaction. Finding myself in perpetual affairs of the opposite sex, most appealing and attractive—each catch and release, defeat, and heartbreak, reinforcing my determination to search and conquer love.
A heart wrestled between lust and fantasy vs. authentic and genuine, and never entirely understanding the latter, I learned that to be likable, I must sacrifice a part of me. I put on masks and played many roles to attract – the fun girl, the non-committal girl, the sexy women. Unconsciously, I trained my mind to believe I was not worthy of a long-term relationship or the value of being seen.
I recognized and critiqued the commercialization of love and sought no alternative. Not knowing how to love or what it felt like, I was emotionally lost; and searched for definitions to sustain a love ethic. I settled for temporary love – the contemporary relationships of men and women free to do as they please void of commitment and obligation, void of real intimacy.
With my armor, make-up, perfect outfit, and vibe, I never allowed the full expression of my soul to shine – I dimmed myself because, after all, something was better than nothing.
Four years ago, losing yet another love. I found myself in the familiar dark hole of blame and shame. The fortunate difference this time was the awareness I was beginning to cultivate with my spiritual practices and mentors' support. I developed the capacity, strength, and vision to see another way. I had two choices, to continue down the familiar path or get curious and risk daring to understand, love, and settle into me.
If we are born of love and are love, how can we act in a way that authentically expresses the love of who we are?
Is there freedom in love when we shame our bodies and starve ourselves of nourishment to slip into a skinny pair of jeans? Is it love when we guard parts of who we are because we are afraid the other will form distaste and walk away? Is it love when we request our partners to change a part of their behavior or personality because it is not something we value, forcing our ideals and personal preference instead of seeking to understand and celebrating in their joy?
To know love and see it genuinely, we must give and receive it freely without agendas, expectations, conditions, or judgments. Forgiveness is the key that unlocks our hearts and breaks down the barriers of hate, oppression, injustice, greed, and power.
Learning to forgive and love ourselves can be hard, but it is the most rewarding gift we can offer ourselves. The context of love, when, whom and how we love, the relationships we sustain and those we walk away from does not dissolve the essence of love. Love does not evaporate into thin air when a loss occurs; it shifts, expands, and multiples if we allow the pain and heartache to break us wide open, liberating vs. hardening and shrinking.
In the essay, Love as the Practice of Freedom, by bell hooks, she writes, "A love ethic makes this expansion possible. The civil rights movement transformed society in the United States because it was fundamentally rooted in a love ethic. No leader has emphasized this ethic more than Martin Luther King, Jr. He had the prophetic insight to recognize that a revolution built on any other foundation would fail. Again and again, King testified that he had "decided to love" because he believed deeply that if we are "seeking the highest good" we "find it through love" because this is "the key that unlocks the door to the meaning of ultimate reality."
Martin Luther King Jr. was passionate about ending injustice, oppression, and hatred by leading with love, a nonviolent approach, and two-way liberation. The moment we choose to love, we best position ourselves to successfully sustain and transform the relationship with ourselves, others, society, and the environment. Setting up an ethical foundation clears the path to our highest potential, truest, unchanging, infinitely valuable, worthy of love, Self.