Love means so many things, but mostly saying goodbye to expectations.
Sure, we all want people to behave the way we want them to, we want them to be more affectionate or more outgoing, or smarter, or more
ambitious; all of these things are expectations.
Expectations are just your requirements for “acceptability” of loving someone, but true love has no expectations. True love simply loves “as
it is.”
Love doesn’t think others are “out to get them.” Love doesn’t think their loved ones are wrong. Love works together, it takes responsibility. It forgives and allows other people’s actions to be their journey, love doesn’t take things personally.
Love doesn’t equal possession, just as the saying goes, “If you love something, set it free, if it comes back, it’s yours, if it doesn’t, then it never was.”
There is truth to the saying that, love allows people their freedom, it doesn’t hold tightly and crush their wings in attempt to keep them.
True love doesn’t want to possess, it is willing to set you free if you want to be.
You may love someone very much, but you may not be compatible with them, or they may drive you crazy with their continued disregard for your feelings, you can still love them, but that doesn’t mean you have to be with them. Love doesn’t mean that you have to stay and stay and stay. You can leave the relationship and love them anyway.
You can put all emotions on a continuum. On one end, you have love then appreciation. After that, it’s joy, happiness, contentment and satisfaction. On the opposite end of the continuum of love is fear.
Other fear-based emotions include hatred, insecurity, jealousy or greed.
Humans tend to be addicted to intense emotion, especially when it feels good. So, when we’re in love, we want to feel that way forever. But guess what? That higher than “Cloud 9” feeling goes away after a while but that doesn’t mean you don’t love the other person anymore, it just means that it’s not new anymore, so that’s where the action
needs to kick in, show the person you love them, don’t just assume they know. Let’s face it: We’re all different, even identical twins aren’t exactly the same. They have different experiences and outlooks about the world. Real love doesn’t make other people wrong for being different, when people truly love one another, they accept their differences.
Empathy is the ability to put you into another person’s shoes and see a thing from their perspective. Love has deep empathy “when you hurt, I hurt.”
People who truly love one another don’t want to hurt them. They want them to feel good. They care about their feelings and try everything they can to make them feel valued and worthy.
Remember, love is happiness, appreciation and feeling good, anything other than that is not love. If we all love one another as ourselves, the world would be a better place.
BY SHAMSIYA BARA’U AHMED
