Understanding what Love is releasing my hatred of the word.
Recently I learned more about what love is. I always thought Love was a tangible thing and something to be measured, like love for your friends, your family, etc.
I cringe when people say "love is all you need." This belief was forced on me in the cult, followed by beatings and abuse of all kinds. I was told this abuse was happening because that person loved me. I equated love with pain and ran from any love that didn't seem painful.
I thought I didn't know what love meant as I'm not married, I don't have kids, so I felt my love was stunted. I resigned myself to the fact that I may never know real love, based on the above assessment. But these are all conditional things like desire, passion, allure, infatuation, all of which fades.
But love is so much more than that.
Love is in everything around us. The air we breathe, the ground we walk on, the stick on the ground, the leaf on the tree. Love is in you, me, and everyone, because we are all love and love is all of us. It's unconditional and unchanging. The painful and the joyful, there is love in everything, we just have to choose it.
If we all chose love, there would be no more suffering, only peace. But you have to always choose to return to love, and that's hard part. Choosing love is so much harder than choosing hate and wanting others to suffer like you do. But in the end, everyone wants love, and everyone wants peace. So why not choose that path?
These days I'm choosing to see things differently. I'm choosing to return to love, again and again.
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace."
--Jimi Hendrix