What do we expect from love?

By  Nadia Khalil Bradley

Love. It is the most common word, topic, desire and privilege. I know what we say love is…but is it really what we think it is?

Love is an energy. Love is not a thing to be coveted and displayed like a prize.  We expect so much from love that love doesn’t have a chance to show us what it truly is, how it looks, sounds, and breathes around us.  We turned love into a bikini, a car, an image, a purchase, only to find out that love is best when it is left alone.

Love talks to us but we don’t hear it because we are too busy expecting things from love that it could never give us.  Then, we think we aren’t loved because our expectations haven’t been met.

Today I would like to ask you:  

What do you expect love to do for you?

Do you expect it to buy you things?

Do you expect it to make you love yourself more?

Do you think that if someone loves you, you can love them, even if you don’t love yourself in the first place?

Do you think that love owes you something because it let you down before… whether it was because of how your family was with you or your friends, co-workers, or relationships?

So what does love really look like?

Love doesn’t ask you to do anything. It just waits until you notice that it can heal. That it can bond. That it is here always. We want and expect many things from it, yet it stands its ground for the right to be itself.

Love has nothing to do with conditions. Love has nothing to do with material possessions. Love has nothing to do with who likes you or not. Love is you. Love is how you treat yourself, how you view life, how you share who you are and can be.

Love is how we talk to each other. Love is how we look at each other. Love is what we are willing to share with each other. Love is the time we spend with one another. Love is the food cooking in the kitchen for everyone to share. Love is the warm blanket you are covered with when you fall asleep on the couch.

Love is simple and very patient.  What does that look like in everyday life?  Imagine a situation where someone has upset you because of something they said or did and you feel all your systems ready to blow up at once.  Instead of screaming or putting the person down, you can just as easily take the path of love and ask, “What was your intention?” They will tell you. If it is a young child you can ask, “Why did you do it that way?” They will answer. Anything else will turn into a bigger argument or complete silence.

You see, we are all made of truth, love and purity. When either is pierced, then we will most likely spend our lifetime trying to fill in that hole. When we talk to each other with disrespect, with lack of love or integrity, we have just pierced that person and created a hole similar to the one that we already have in ourselves.

So what do we do when we feel pierced?  First we must remember that we CAN heal. All we need to do is make the decision to go back to the fork in the road and take the path of love. Just one decision, that’s all it takes.

That decision alone not only heals you, but it gives you the choice to not pierce the other soul. It will heal them by teaching them that they are worthy and deserving of love. You will witness both of your hearts open up and your souls respond. You get to have a productive and healing conversation rather than creating a standoff that sends everyone to their respective corners. If you remember that you can make the decision to go back to the fork in the road and repave it with love, you can use it the rest of your life and you can see the difference in yourself and in others.

Love is the only energy we want, and yet we found a way to push it away in fear that we would lose it. Oh, that silly fear. Love is waiting for you to say YES to knowing that there is only ONE LOVE in life and that is YOU. There is only one decision to make and that is to go back to the fork in the road and take the path of love.

We all know this already and in this day promise yourself, promise each other, that you will allow yourself to remember that you can make this choice. Love is waiting for you to live in the choice you make, and love wants to finally show you its real self. How patient love has been, waiting for its chance to be a part of your life.

Love is our first language.

Love is our one common language.