Saturday, January 5, 2019

On Love...


I keep seeing a post that says “Wait for the love you deserve.” I can’t find it, or I’d reshare it with this post. Let’s talk about DESERVE for a minute. Humans are wretched, repugnant creatures, every last one of us (yes me, and yes you). Don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot of beauty and wonder in people too. But none of use DESERVE anything, much less love. You all know I am not a religious person, but I was raised in the Christian faith, and I think all religions teach some very positive spiritual lessons (albeit some really misguided and terrible ones too, but that’s another post), and religious parables can be incredibly effective instructional tools. In the story of Jesus, god sent his son to teach humans about god’s love—not so you know how much god loves you, but so you know HOW god loves and how god wants you to love. (Yeah, yeah, we all know I don’t believe in god, but the metaphor is still valid.) The whole point of Jesus is that people don’t deserve god’s love but he gave it anyway, and none of us deserve the love of other humans either, but we’re supposed to give it anyway…not because any of us deserve it but because we all NEED it and need it equally. So how about we all stop focusing on the love we deserve and start focusing on the quality of the love we’re giving to our imperfect, wretched, repugnant, and wholly undeserving (albeit beautiful and wondrous whether you see it or not) fellow man (or woman or whatever you identify as). I don’t know about you, but I really want unconditional love, and while there’s absolutely nothing I can do to make anyone love me that way, I can choose to love others that way. It really sucks. It hurts—quite a lot sometimes—but only because my ego cares 1000x more about the love I get than the love I give. The universe has been trying to teach me unconditional love for awhile now. I admit, I have been obstinate in my resistance. I give up. I give in. The only way this love can exist in this world is we choose to be it—regardless of whether or not we get it. Love is how we change the world, and if you don’t believe me, watch these videos:

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