Five harmful lies about love
Real love is not exactly what most of us think it is...
(This is a repost of an article I wrote more than two years ago. Since this month includes Valentine’s Day, I wanted to say it again about love, with some minor tweaks.)
It’s way past time to set the record straight about love, which is the essence of our being. We human beings and everything else that exists in the universe are created out of love. I will demonstrate this mathematically in a future post.
If it does not seem that way, it’s because we are telling ourselves lies about love that we then believe, to our detriment.
Lie No. 1: The opposite of love is hatred.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The opposite of love is judgment.
This is like matter and anti-matter: love and judgment cannot co-exist at the same point in time, space, or any other dimension. Where there is judgment, there is diminished or no love at all. Whenever and however we judge someone or something, we are not loving unconditionally that person or something.
Think about this. More importantly, feel with it. Love feels great. Do we not crave love and bask in its glow? Yet the one thing most of us fear and loathe more than anything else is the mere possibility of being judged in some manner.
Judgment terrifies us so much that we will keep silent rather than be judged for speaking out. We refuse to take risks and pass up opportunities for fear of somehow failing (another judgment). Wallowing in our pits of ambivalence, we avoid intimacy out of our fear of being judged by another person.
We dare not even think about our fear of being judged by God.
Lie No. 2: Love hurts.
No, it does not. Review Lie No. 1. Love is a free-flowing torrent that yields and adapts at the blink of an eye. That is why it feels so wonderful.
If love hurts, then somehow and in some way, there is judgment attached or involved in such love, and it is no longer true, meaning unconditional.
Judgment is rigid, unmoving, and unbending. This characteristic of judgment is precisely how it places limits—meaning conditions, standards, or expectations—on love. And whenever there are limits on love, the unavoidable consequences are pain, hurt, and tragedy beyond comprehension.
Lie No. 3: Love is hard.
Wrong again. Love—the unconditional variety—is the easiest thing in the world. Judgment is hard. Judgment makes love unnecessarily hard by making it needlessly complex thanks to the conditions, standards, and expectations it places on love.
Judgment is also tough—and damn proud of it. The very phrase “tough love” means that there is judgment involved, but perhaps not in the manner expected.
Some examples will help clarify our understanding here. The parents who keep bailing their adult children out of trouble do so out of need. Their need stems from their judgment-based expectations about what constitutes “good” parenting.
A wife refuses to leave an abusive husband because she has judged herself unworthy of a kinder life partner. She does not know consciously that she has this judgment against herself. But it is reflected back to her in abuse from an unloving spouse.
Lie No. 4: There’s a price to pay for love.
No! No! No! Unconditional love exacts no price, imposes no penalties, makes no demands. It just is.
If the love we experience imposes a price, then what we are encountering is conditional, limited love.
Lie No. 5: Love conquers all.
Sad to say, this isn’t true, either. Love cannot conquer fear because doing so would violate free will. Each of us has the right to our fears, until we no longer need them and decide to let go of them.
In the short term, however, fear trumps love. Fear is what drives most people on this planet to do, say, and act in crazy, incomprehensible ways. Even worse, fear is terribly painful. I know. I have felt far too much of it and am relived and grateful to have let so much fear go.
And so love waits, with infinite patience, for us to become tired of our fears, bored with our games, fed up with our isolation.
Love may not conquer all, but because it is unlimited and unending, love ultimately triumphs over fear.
Love waits for each of us, too. So what are we waiting for?