L is for Love by Conlee Ricketts #atozchallenge

is for Love

I entered an essay contest once about “love.” The problem I had was that the contest asked us to write about a time we learned the meaning of love.  The more I thought about it the bigger and more confusing the word love became to me.

I was spinning! Which kind of love?  Unconditional love, conditional love (I remember learning about this one really well) romantic love, true love, lasting love, platonic love, brotherly love, sisterly love, parental love, love of oneself.  This list kept on growing with love as the base but the actual experiences of each love being so very different, and each with their own very different attached lesson.

I couldn’t articulate what I meant into my contest entry, Willie’s Home, so I wrote about trying to teach an aspect of love instead.  The essay is HERE if you want to read it.  It didn’t win, but it is one of my favorite memories of writing losing essays.

Honest feelings of love are of course wonderful sensations. They are a wonderful place to live.  Any aspect of love, any version of love, and any honest moment of sharing love is important.  I no longer worry about finding romantic love—I missed that boat.  I choose to focus on motherly love, the love I extend friends in need, and my ability to demonstrate love by accepting others and circumstances without judgment.

It seems to me that learning about love is a lifelong activity.  I didn’t understand unconditional love or how that truly felt until I was 38 when my daughter was born; having a no strings attached love for another human being blew my mind.

I am still learning about selfless love as I watch other giving so much of themselves expecting nothing in return.  To have learned how that feels though, I don’t think I’m there yet. 

I don’t have any sisters so I will never learn exactly how that love feels—not in this lifetime anyway—and that’s okay. 

I am working on the loving of oneself thing, it has been very hard, but I can honestly say that right now as of today, I still do not know how that love feels.  I imagine it to be this awesome wave of love, similar to unconditional, that will just wash over me one day when I least expect it.  I am guessing it will be life-changing and will open me up to other kinds of love in the process, but I’m just not there yet and that is also okay.

Love is big enough to keep on teaching me for the rest of time.

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