Unconditional Love

Love, love, love and more love. Me being single I wonder at times,  am I the best person to be writing about love?  As I ponder this question my answer is always yes!  I have love, I am loved,  receive love and give love.  I’m single now but was not always single. I was married once.  I know what good love feels like. My next thought is who better than me to write about love?  Besides, this topic of love consumes my thoughts.  I truly believe I was put here to talk about love from my perspective and from time to time from the perspective of others.  Check out my podcast, we talk about love with everyday people, hence the podcast name, Love Talk For Everyday People (LTFEP).

Now that that is out of the way I want to talk about unconditional love.  I say it, and give it but never have I taken the time to define it.  What is unconditional love?  It does not matter who you love,  whoever it is,  be it your parents, your children, your friend, your neighbor, your co-worker, or your lover your job is to love them unconditionally.  That means regardless of their flaws you are to love them anyway, regardless of how they behave and treat others you are to love them anyway.  These are God’s commandments, not mine but Gods’.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31) Loving unconditionally is no easy task.

The dictionary defines unconditional love as;  “Love, unconditional love is, in essence, true love — so different from the kind of love most of us have known all our lives that it deserves a definition of its own. Unconditional love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves”. Without any thought of what we might get.  This is a novel concept.  Most of us love with an expectation that in return we will at least get love back or going further we may expect to receive something material for providing our love.

In order to love someone unconditionally, you must first love thyself.  Unconditional love starts at home, with oneself. You know your own flaws and shortcomings better than anyone else, and better than you can ever know anyone else’s. Being able to love yourself despite this unsurpassable awareness of your own faults puts you in the position to be able to offer the same to others.  Thus, you must be able to recognize, accept, and forgive your own imperfections in order to do the same for someone else. If you cannot deem yourself worthy of being loved unconditionally, you’ll never truly be able to deem yourself worthy of offering it.

Some say unconditional love is not real or there is no such thing.  I believe those that believe that do not truly love themselves thus cannot fathom loving anyone else without expecting something in return.  I say learn to love yourself more in spite of your imperfections so, you can love others the same way.  The world is lacking love, unconditional love is what we need in the world.  Reach out and love someone… UNCONDITIONALLY!

♥