When reading others' definitions of love, it’s challenging to sit back and let them externalize the indescribable. Someone once said love is giving 100% to your partner; it can’t be 50/50 because then you are expecting something in return. The notion regarding expecting a return is entirely accurate. It isn’t love if you have to expect something back; it turns into a barter system, a capitalistic performance, not pure.
But if you give 100%, where do you fit into that equation? How do you expect to love someone else 100% and not lose yourself? Speaking from direct experience with giving 100% externally all the time, it doesn’t work—at least not in my case. I completely forgot who I was, and the 100% was extremely negative. The love was lost.
Giving 100% isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there needs to be balance, not from your partner, but within yourself. There is no love if there is no love for self. There will be a constant disconnect between what you perceive as real love and what truly is love. If you don’t spend time on self-care, you will project all the negativity that you aren’t dealing with onto your partner.
Whatever stressors are below the surface will filter into your everyday routine. Pissed at your boss, the people that cut you off in traffic, the store that didn’t have the book you wanted—the list varies as we all encounter our own experiences each day. You and your partner are constantly discussing the manifestations your mind has processed throughout the day. That’s what you are making yourself—a computer with a few problems that need addressing. But sometimes, you manifest these problems and place them onto others.
The reality is you are not content with yourself. Instead of turning inward, seeing where that stemmed from, where the pain began, the root cause, the reality, you would rather bury it, forget about it, let it dissipate into nothingness. What we aren’t in tune with is that our unconscious doesn’t forget anything. It doesn’t go anywhere except out of your waking consciousness. It will remain part of your psyche for as long as you let it fester, slowly rotting away like an unattended cavity.
You know it’s there, but you can ignore the pain for quite some time. Then, all of a sudden, your tooth is gone, completely eroded, killed the root. If you repress enough, you won’t have any more teeth to chew the daily routine anymore. You will not be yourself anymore; you will just be a product of your manifestations, letting your repressions run your life because you are too lazy to take hold of the wheel.
Each and every detail of your life is important, everything you pass by. It’s your job to soak in the external stimuli and examine how it touches your inner being. If you just let everything zip by, what’s the point of living? If you answer that with, “make money,” burn a dollar bill and then look at another one. The burnt dollar and the untouched dollar are the same thing. They are pieces of paper (or were pieces of paper).
Why would you want to hand me paper for food? Why do I want you to cut a tree down in order to hand you over food that I’ve grown for humanity?
Love without Losing Yourself was written December 22, 2006