Love Is…… some call it a battlefield, a war, a mystery, a lie, or an illusion. But those are things that love isn’t.
Love is always the answer. It gives us hope when the world is in panic and fear. Love is the most amazing emotion and the most misunderstood. It is just amazing when we are in it, but when we are not in it then life is like an endless journey through Hades. Love calms the fear that brings destruction to our dreams and then builds a new dream that is better than the crumbled into nothingness. It’s New Years Day 1997, it’s been two days since I was released from the hospital and my body is too weak to walk up the stairs to my bedroom. My dream of competing in ironman competitions along with all my other dreams seems to have been torn and ripped out of my life and heart. I felt as if I had no place to build my life from. It had all died over Christmas in the hospital as I experienced new levels of pain and exhaustion. Then as I sat on the couch with no will or desire to do anything the idea came to rebuild my life on love, and my quest to understand and live this misunderstood emotion called love began.
Love became the answer for me to dream again. At first I believed that others were my only sources of love and joy, but relationships and divorce taught me that is a lie of the ego mind. Every time I relied on others for love it always failed and felt like a lie, a mystery, an illusion that the Universe was teasing me with. I wanted to believe that I deserve love but it seemed as if everyone was withholding it from me. I thought that I loved myself until I tried to tell myself in the mirror as I looked into my eyes that I Love You only to discover that was a lie. How could anyone love me when I didn’t even love myself and I thought that I knew what love is.
Gradually the answer came. Gradually love came. That is I began to love myself with with self-love. Love is the answer, or more accurately Self-Love and loving ourselves is the answer. No one can steal this from us or deprive us of it. With this self-love or love of self I began to find meaning in my life. I began to love others again. Yes we deserve love. We deserve our own love. In this we find the answer to the meaning of life and experience the joy in the journey. Love is the answer. It just is.
