Today was Valentine’s Day. The city was awash with red: flowers, shop displays, hawkers with red merchandise, even a red burger in one of the fast-food joints. It is as if all of a sudden, we had woken up and discovered love was something. Wondering what happens on those other days when there are no flowers or gifts.
As I did my morning run, I went through an audiobook: “Learn to Love Yourself More Than Anyone Else”. This year, Wueh! The universe is speaking ooooooo…..and loudly at that. The book was about how we tend to overlove and overgive ourselves in relationships, only to end up resentful when there is no reciprocity. It dawned on me how sometimes we can love from a place of neediness and deficit, rather than from a place of abundance and purpose.
The lessons were many and very powerful. I learnt that one should take time to know oneself, to sit in the silence and establish what you want, who you are, and how you want to be loved. What are you looking for? How do you want to be treated? What feels good and what does not? This means that you have to be ok by yourself, to be alone and devoid of the distractions we fill the empty spaces with. Only then can you genuinely look inwards into your heart.
This process will cause us to unearth past hurts that define how we give and receive love. Childhood trauma or untruths that were shared with us to keep us subservient and chained to a system that served others and left us starved for love and affection. Things such as “it is wrong to want great things, it is wrong to say no, it is wrong to speak up when things are going wrong or hurting you”. These lies keep us bound, and the sooner we are willing to unlearn them and let go of them, the sooner we begin healing and appreciating the abundance that is love.
I learnt that boundaries are important: not to keep people out but to keep us safe. They allow us to define the extent we are ready to go, and that we need to communicate them clearly. Unfortunately, some people who were in our lives for what they got from us will fall away because it no longer serves them. We are to let them go, just as we shed excess weight to keep the ship afloat. We ought to be ok without others, even if it means being alone. The right ones will stay or show up, those who are not afraid to meet us where we are. This is hard, especially if approval and affirmation are how we were taught to give and receive love.
Once we know ourselves, what we want, and how far we can go, we are ready to show up. To meet with and engage others with a similar focus and life purpose. At this point, we love without attachment. We love from a place of freedom, because we choose to, not because we have to. At this point, when a relationship does not work out, we are not bitter or broken, but we release it with kindness and love. We move on knowing that there is an abundance of love all around us. This is the ultimate height of love; the kind that our Saviour gave us. Unconditional love. Loving because we are love, we are full of love, and not because of what we get out of it.
As my run ended, I knew what I had to do. I needed to return home to me: to the little girl in me. To hold her, to forgive the past ills, and let them go. To love her and tenderly nurture her until she is strong again. Then allow her to return to love.
