The first step in this search is to identify what it is we are looking for. In the English language the word love has many uses. The word love is a verb: to love. It's meaning is derived by just how we use it in a sentence. I love my car. I love broccoli. I love you. These uses of the word describe how we feel about objects, a strong attachment perhaps but it does not define the word. It is an action not a feeling. When we link the word with descriptive adjectives we change it's meaning. Physical Love becomes sex, Brotherly Love speaks to a bond between family members, Unconditional Love is reserved to describe a love that comes from a source outside of human understanding. Try as we may "Unconditional" love seems to allude our ability to reproduce. We just can't do it. However it is the very thing we all desire; to be loved and accepted unconditionally. When we use Love and Acceptance as a way to control others; giving or withholding them as means of getting others to do what we want them to do. That is not unconditional Love!
When we look for a source to define the word love, 1 Corinthians chapter 13:4-8 in the Bible is widely quoted. It provides us a picture of what Love is, and from that we can also see what it isn’t. Lets take a look at the first two attributes given to Love. Patience and Kindness.
"Love is Patient". I don’t know about you but I am not all that patient. Not with myself or others. Patience, apparently is not a virtue that is inherent to humans. I was told if I wanted it, I had to work for it. I was also given a strong warning. If you want to develop patience be prepared for every asshole on the planet to cross your path. Why would I want that? To prove that I am a good person? That I am Loving? My patience usually has an expectation attached to it. As a result of my limited capacity, when the appropriate amount of time has past with no apparent change, or insufficient change, has taken place, I run out of Patience. Now it’s time to take matters into our own hands. We all experienced it. What do you do, when you run out of patience?
"Love is Kind"-Kindness is another story. What is Kindness? Doing a good deed for another? There are long lists of things we can do to show kindness. The question is; Is it kindness when there is an expectation of a reward? When we are kind to others publicly for the world to see in order to show what a good person I am? Is it a gift if we expect something in return. What happens when we do a kind deed, and expect the recipient to be grateful for the gesture and they aren’t? “that’s the last time I’ll do that, the ungrateful so and so. Our actions seam to be motivated by “What’s in it for me?
Kindness is often described as a weapon. Kill them with Kindness! Our motivation is the demise of the recipient. We get pleasure from knowing that we are inflicting pain on them through our actions. Talk about ulterior motives. We take the purest most innocent thing and find a way to use it as a weapon.
The first step is to be honest with myself. Love is patient and kind. I am neither. I am less patient and kind with myself than anyone else. I hold myself to a much higher standard. I have failed to produce even the first two attributes of love within myself. I am a failure, a looser, undisciplined, weak, and the list of descriptive adjectives we say to ourselves, grows with each failed attempt. When I admit that I am powerless to produce love, even for myself. What hope is there to find it in anyone else?
I must find the source of this power. The power of Love. This journey begins with Faith, a hope that Love exists in spite of what my four senses tell me. A power that is not subject to my thoughts or actions. An eternal all powerful force, that when found and I experience it’s power, I am changed in an instant.
