How to Love a Thing

"Indeed, the willingness to be confused, I now realize, is a prerequisite for a good life. Wanting things to be simple can become a kind of prison, it really can, because you end up staying trapped inside what you want things to be rather than embracing how they could be."

Quote from The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

Well let's start with honesty. At this ripe age of 27, I can honestly admit I have never truly loved a thing until now.

Pinterest reference: vintage cupid

The term love is very obscure and abstract. As a child we give the term love all these interchangeable meanings because it makes us feel like we have some grand knowledge to say we feel love. Like you have achieved awareness of a deeper meaning in life. But there is something to be lost in prematurely claiming to understand a thing. Especially by assuming the thing to be something else entirely, just to forge a look of invulnerability. As to say "you can’t get anything over on me because I know this life". But are we ever formally educated on love? Or do we walk around pretending love is some natural act and an explanation would be needless to say, like breathing? Well this couldn’t be further from the truth because in truth love is a very unnatural thing. Our nature is the aspiration of optimal survival. Which can be a pretty selfish, loveless act, indeed.

Our initial assumption of love is the feeling of dopamine released when achieving emotional/sexual connection or validation. Not until later in our life experience do we start to associate the act of loving with a sensation of suffering and self-induced pain. But love being pleasurable is the assumption that leads to a life of aimlessness. Whether it is love for a person, a place, or an action, plans made around this false interpretation of love will surely create a life without virtue. When the suffering begins you think you made the wrong decision or you need to change your life course. Embracing the discomfort will reveal the deeper meaning of your life and the exact ways you need to grow. A person that pursues love will omit an aura of strength, safety, integrity, truth, wisdom, et cetera. They possess a kind of confidence because their life direction cannot be altered by unexpected discomfort and uncontrollable circumstance. These things are inevitable in life. Love is a commitment. It only exist without expectations, entitlement, or exchange. Love is an unconditional action. If done correctly, it creates a very full life of meaningful suffering that results in fearlessness, knowledge, expansion, and attraction. If done incorrectly, it creates an empty life of meaningless pain, isolation, victimization, and powerlessness. 

So how can we really love a thing? Well it starts with not seeking asylum when the suffering begins. Embrace the suffering with awareness that the pain will transcend your perception into a truer reality. Only this kind of vulnerability allows you the chance to adapt to what life is, instead of what you wish it was. The adaptation that comes from continual acceptance derives a strength of accommodating to the unknown. This strength promotes autonomy in a mind that naturally wants to relinquish control to what can seem predictable, when life is anything but that. Autonomy is the opposite of dependence and dependence is the result of lovelessness. Dependence on others, dependence on substances, dependence on escape, or illusions, to tolerate life causes an inflexible identity derived from the fear in accepting our demise is inevitable. This inability to accept creates a life void of growth. A stagnant, complacent existence. Although this is a comfortable space for many, it is not a life worth living. At the end of such an empty life certainly awaits regret. 

So without further ado, a list of ways to love better:

• Make an effort to understand the thing, as an expert would.

• Do not attempt to change the thing to something that is more mentally digestible for you. This includes deconstructing it via insults or over-criticism in hopes your rejection will trigger the thing to change itself.

• Remain vulnerable in the presence of the thing. 

• Do not expect validation from the thing. 

• Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable without seeking relief.

• Attempt to perceive reality from the perspective of the thing.

• Be honest about any feelings of inadequacy you may feel.

• Accept your experience with the thing as a reflection of yourself in all its good and bad.