Love does not come from living in a state of conflict-free utopian bliss, but it comes from working through the challenges of human relationships.
Love does not mean never being negatively affected by others, but it is how we respond in our own relationships and to our own anger and upset, which shows what love is. It takes practice, it takes courage, it involves mistakes and learning from them, and it takes conscious and conscientious change.
Yes, love can be experience in a deep and meaningful way—in meditation, walks in nature, in a song or in a book. These practices help us, but they are not the complete picture. The complete picture involves what we do in our actual relationships with others and actual treatment of others. Love does not exist merely in abstractions and ideals, as if our hearts are contained in a vacuum, apart from the activities of the world.
It is easy to believe one has experienced love when there are no human challenges to face, but love is largely born out of difficulty. Living in this imperfect and at times disheartening world is how we can really test the true quality of our love. Each time we choose to respond with actions and thoughts in a way that reflects love, in the face of it all—lets us experience more of what love actually is in our bones.
Love has come to receive an effortless, light-hearted, and pretty image. It is the vague, nebulous answer to life. The word “love” gets thrown around, tossed around in the breeze, treated rather carelessly and with a certain negligence. Yes, love is given a lack of love itself, a lack of sincere and genuine effort.
But love can be effortless, light-hearted, and beautiful—but let us remember how much the butterfly toiled in the cocoon to develop these elegant and graceful qualities. And neither does the butterfly toss carelessly in the wind—it fine-tunes its wings to navigate winds much stronger than it, and tracks the sun with its antennae like an experienced navigator.
And love, indeed, is a significant answer to life, but one that is developed with a tenacity of spirit.
