people have told me, ‘love yourself first. you have to love yourself before anyone else can love you.’ but i have observed that there is an unconditional love, greater than my self-love work, i simply have to receive it. it generates a gorgeous softening light that allows me to see myself anew.
and love is an expansive lens. once i see one person as worthy of love, be it myself, or a child, or a lover, it opens up a liberating worldview where i am free to see anyone, even everyone, through that lens.
love makes other humans so infinitely forgivable. it makes compassion a default. it makes the attention of the lover healing.
love is a form of brilliance. it puts a shine on the lover and the beloved.
love is a cellular sustenance. the space between one and two has such abundance of life in it, the very taste is a healing.
love is a form of genius, a visitation of clarity wherein the ways of the world seem simpler, more possible.
if i want love in my life, i can’t participate in actions that hurt love. learning to see those actions clearly, even through my own loneliness, desperation or desire, is a maturing.
love requires a continuous willingness to surrender, to let go of the best i have crafted of myself so far, to drop back into beginner’s mind about my heart.
love finds me in a messy, imperfect, vulnerable, reactive pile of shame, takes my shoulders, and says, you are doing a good job, you are lovely and lovable, i see you, and i love you.
love justifies every moment and experience of my past, and makes my future delectable, valuable, a smart longing, a creation ground.