When we say we want more love in our lives, we usually think about people.
A partner.
Family.
Children.
Friends.
Someone who understands us.
Someone who chooses us.
Someone who loves us back.
But lately I have been wondering whether we have made our definition of love far too small.
What if love isn’t only something exchanged between two people?
What if love is a way of experiencing life?
And what if, when we say there isn’t enough love around us, sometimes we simply aren’t recognizing all the forms in which it is already appearing?
Love Doesn't Always Say “I Love You”
Think about how many ways love can appear during an ordinary day.
Feeding your dog before feeding yourself.
Calling your mother.
Making tea for someone without being asked.
Giving a friend your complete attention.
Creating something beautiful.
Taking care of your body.
Forgiving someone.
Forgiving yourself.
Helping a stranger.
Planting something.
Teaching someone what you know.
Giving someone space when space is what they need.
None of these moments necessarily announce themselves as love.
But perhaps they are.
There Is Love of People — And Love of Life
We recognize love of family.
Love of friends.
Love of children.
Love of pets.
But there is also:
Love of freedom.
Love of purpose.
Love of creation.
Love of learning.
Love of nature.
Love expressed as forgiveness.
Love expressed as acceptance.
Love expressed as appreciation.
Love expressed as devotion.
Love expressed as service.
Once we begin looking at love this way, something interesting happens.
The question changes from:
“Who loves me?”
to:
“Where is love present in my life?”
Those are very different questions.
Love as a Way of Being
Perhaps unconditional love isn’t simply an intense emotion.
Maybe it is an orientation toward life.
A way of asking:
How can I contribute here?
How can I make this interaction a little kinder?
How can I leave this person feeling a little more seen?
How can I create something useful?
How can I appreciate what is already here?
This doesn’t mean becoming endlessly self-sacrificing.
Love without boundaries can easily become depletion.
Sometimes love says yes.
Sometimes love says no.
Sometimes love embraces.
Sometimes love releases.
Sometimes love stays.
Sometimes love walks away without hatred.
The expression changes.
The underlying quality doesn’t have to.
Expectations Can Hide Love From Us
Sometimes love is present, but it doesn’t arrive in the form we expected.
We expect someone to express love through words.
They express it through responsibility.
We expect affection.
They offer loyalty.
We expect agreement.
They offer honesty.
We expect someone to solve our problem.
They simply sit beside us while we go through it.
When we become attached to one particular expression of love, we may overlook ten others.
This doesn’t mean accepting relationships that don’t meet our needs.
It simply means becoming more capable of recognizing what is actually there.
What We Practice, We Begin to Notice
There is an interesting feature of attention.
Whatever we repeatedly look for becomes easier to see.
Look constantly for disrespect and you will notice every slight.
Look constantly for reasons to be afraid and the world will provide plenty of evidence.
But deliberately begin noticing kindness, generosity, beauty, connection and care — and those begin appearing everywhere too.
Not because the world suddenly changed.
Because your attention changed.
Perhaps love works similarly.
The more willing we become to express it, the more sensitive we become to recognizing it.
And gradually, love stops being something we wait for someone else to deliver.
It becomes something we participate in.
Maybe Love Was Never Missing
Imagine moving through one ordinary day looking specifically for love.
The person holding a door.
The parent packing lunch.
The friend checking in.
The nurse adjusting a blanket.
The stranger letting another car merge.
The artist creating something they may never be paid for.
The person quietly caring for an aging parent.
The dog waiting at the door.
The tree someone planted decades ago whose shade you are enjoying today.
Suddenly love becomes much larger than romance.
It becomes woven into life itself.
Perhaps that is one of the shifts that happens when we release some of our resistance, expectations, old grievances and predetermined ideas about what love is supposed to look like.
We don’t necessarily create more love.
We become better at seeing the love that was already there.
And perhaps the more love we choose to bring into the world, the less we need to keep asking the world to prove to us that love exists.