Thoughts On This (Month Of) Love

It’s around that time of the year when many of us rush to buy flowers, gifts and spend time with the people we love, whether it’s Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day or Dragobete and Mărțișor, where I’m from 🙂. It’s all about love ❤.

I love buying meaningful gifts and I love spending time with the people dear to my heart. I enjoy showing love, care and appreciation as often as I can. I feel like love is deeply present in our virtual lives, especially on birthdays and holidays, when we get to actually take a break from “life” and be with our loved ones. I see pictures of lovers, friends, families, pets and I see love. But do we truly let ourselves feel the love or are we just posting love on social media because ’tis the season?

These days I’ve been wondering if we truly love someone or if we remember we love them because society reminds us that. In a world where we are so busy and distracted, I wonder if we think about what love means or if we are waaay too caught up in life to think about things like that. Yes, I think a lot! Too much, sometimes, I plead guilty of that :)). But let’s give love a little bit of thought, shall we?

My motto for this year is I am here to learn to love it all. Man, this is a challenge! To love what I think is bad, to love the ones who triggered hurtful feelings within me, to love the situations that are totally opposite from what I want, to love the anger and frustration that I find within, to love myself when I make mistakes are just some of the challenges I faced so far. And it’s only been 2 months since I started!

It’s easy to love when all is well, it’s easy to love the ones who make us smile, the ones who fit in our craziness. It’s easy to love the joy and kindness within ourselves and the things that go as we expect them to. But is that the real kind of love or do we just love feeling good when people and situations are exactly as we want them to be? Can we love those situations that mess up our lives and make things difficult? Can we love the ones who annoy us? Can we love the ones who say things we don’t like? Can we love ourselves when we don’t like ourselves?

I think we can. And I think we should learn that.

How can we do it? Well, that’s what I’m set to discover this year. I’ll get back to you when I figure it out. In the meantime, I challenge you to question what you think love is.

Have you ever felt love? The kind where you see the person’s beauty, kindness and innocence, but you also see their flaws and ignorance and you still love them exactly for who they are? I felt glimpses of this, at times. I went back to fantasy, judgement and ego in between the glimpses.

See your loved ones as they really are, with everything you like and dislike in them and with all the conflicting traits they have. And when you really see them, ask yourself if you love them or if you love the idea of them – the one you created in your mind and that you picture all the time and fantasize over. I challenge you to learn to love people as they are. I challenge you to love yourself as you are. Build love within yourself, let yourself feel it and let it guide you every single day!

I am learning to love it all this year. Are you up for the challenge?

Originally published on Medium