Tuesday, April 30, 2013

A to Z Challenge: L is for...... LOVE!

How easy is this topic?

Love. There are many flavors of love. They are not better or worse or right or wrong.  They are just different. 

There is material love.  The love of things.  People tend to collect things they love.  It might be comic books or porcelain dolls, or maybe it's sports team memorabilia or music.  It can be as simple as loving a certain color or food.  Can you guess what my favorite food is?  Hint:  It's in the title of this blog! 

Love can also be interpersonal.  It can be romantic or lustful.  It can be the unconditional love between parent and child.  It can be the love that close friends and family share.  It can be a bigger, more universal love, like love of your fellow man, your religion or faith or of nature and the animals.

Then, there is universal love.  It is often, that unrecognized realization that we are all one.

Love is heart centered.  When we are truly acting from our heart, selfless and true, we are not only feeling love, we ARE love.  It is such a wonderful feeling to have an open heart.  To interact and be with people who also have open hearts.

While we often love those in our lives, we tend to take their love for granted and assume they just know.  When love is 'new', we tend to verbalize our love with those 3 little words "I love you".  As our relationships progress, grow and settle into a routine once established, we tend to say it less and even demonstrate tokens of affection and love less.  It doesn't necessarily mean we have "fallen" out of love.  It usually just means we are so comfortable now in that relationship, it is simply understood.  Or is it?

While that may be true, the human side of us not only wants to love and be loved, we want to feel loved.  Taking time to stay connected to the things and especially the people who you love is paramount to your health and well-being and to theirs.  So often, relationships end up 'in trouble' or fail because of a lack of communication in general.  Their connection to each other is lost.  The love is thought to be lost.  Maybe it is.  Relationships do grow and change and people do fall in and out of romantic love.  Maybe it is not lost, though.  Maybe it is just victim to stasis and routine.  Maybe you just need to rekindle it.  Maybe, we all need reminders that we are loved.

Hearts can be broken.  Love can grow and change.  The greater the love, the more painful the heartbreak when the love is lost.  Or, more appropriately, when the person and what they meant to you is lost.

Don't wait for relationships to decline and fall apart before recognizing the reasons.  Don't give up on love easily.  Fight for that which you love with honesty and truth.  Don't wait until someone is sick, injured or dying to tell them you love them.  Tell them every day, especially those close to you.

My youngest son is a tremendous teacher of the ways of love.  He is as heart centered as they come, naturally.  He tells me he loves me every day.  Several times.  It's as natural as breathing for him.  He reminds me of that from which we came.  That universal, unconditional heart centered love.

Go forth and love one another.  Be kind.  Be true.  Be love.  

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