Love, the starter’s pack (or what to do when you need more love)

Love is so beautiful to mention, isn’t it? Like an armful of beautiful red roses and a warm embrace, it’s the thing that makes the world go round. All kinds of wonderful love lifts your heart and makes you feel alive. I think anyone you ask would like more love in their life (chocolates, hearts and Valentine’s Day totally optional).

Who among us would say ‘no thanks’ to that possibility? Of having more love in their lives? Anyone? Would you take a little more friendship, or a little more romance, if given the option? Maybe just a little bit more kindness or thoughtfulness throughout your day. Would anyone actually say no to that? I mean, please, let me go get my bucket, right?!

But Love is actually the biggest and somewhat scariest topic of all, and it requires bravery to even talk about. It’s so big that it can’t be contained on one page, certainly not this one (but you have to start somewhere.) So scary in fact, that I hesitate to share my thoughts. I find myself wrestling with the ideas and the words as I write them, as much as I wrestle with love itself. Each day I live, I grapple in the space between the theory of love and its implementation. I could never pretend to have it all figured out. But I keep coming back to this one thing, this starting line, bottom line truth, and it won’t let me shake it.

So here goes. From one woman in the trenches to another….

If you want more love in your life, it starts with you.

Love really starts with you. This is not the conversation about how romance starts with self love, or that love will find you when you’re ready (though both really can be true). This is about, do you want more live in your life? Then start looking at what you’re putting out there.

This may sound crazy. I know, I know. It does sound crazy. Or maybe you already knew it.

But either way it’s true, and it’s the truthful starting point in every junction and conversation about love that needs a to be revisited.

If you want more love, you need to give more love.

How does that make you feel when you hear that? Does it scare you? Make you feel sad? Did you have a sudden running list of “but”s on your mind? “But I am loving.” Or “I deserve better” or “I’m just not getting the love that I crave”. “I do so much”. All of those things can be true. For many of of, it’s probably is true, on one level or another. And I’m so sorry for the places where love lacks or gaps for you right now. You don’t deserve anything but love. That is true. You should know that deep in your bones.

And yet. That next level? The more that you want and deserve? It still starts with you.

I know it’s hard, but if we feel that we’re lacking in life, we have to start at the only place we ever really can start. Ourselves.

No matter how hard we might try otherwise , we are the only thing that we can control. No matter how hard I try, how many hints I may make, how much I set myself up to be loved, I cannot make it happen. I cannot control any input that I might receive from the outside. I can only control my output. Its hard, but it’s the only power that I have.

Even if you’re so loving, which I’m sure you are. You’re so giving already; it’s who you are, it’s what you do. But this is not about doing more. This is not about any kind of guilt. (Guilt is reactive, internally focused. This is about making conscious choices to be more proactive and maybe leaving less room for guilt.). It’s about letting go, releasing, relaxing a little more. Stick with me a minute.

Here’s the thing. I know, love is sooooooo expensive. It’s not just the flowers and diamonds, dinners out, the effort of beauty and all the things that make us look desirable (though, honestly, that is very real, too.) It’s that love as a verb, which we hear about at weddings. “Love is patient, love is kind. It keeps no record of wrongs.” That love.

It is not cheap, quick, mere words, or plain actions. It’s hard to give, and to give on repeat. It costs you time, patience, energy, ego. If you’ve been in a committed relationship, a marriage, parenthood for any length of time, you understand it deeply. Sometimes you run a little dry, maybe even little bitter. I get it. It’s totally normal.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..” seems to be how many relationships start. But slowly, eventually, maybe because of time or selfish human nature, I don’t know exactly, the question seems to flip. It becomes “how do YOU love ME. Let me count the ways (or maybe count the ways that you continue to fail)”.

It’s so easy to become self- protective or self- centered, even in our loving and serving of our families. (Or maybe that’s just me!). I realize that sometimes I put what I feel is love out there, and when I don’t get a response that I’d hope for, I can become bitter or withdraw.

I don’t even always hear my silent “I’ll love you, if…”. Is that even really even love anyway?

I love my family and friends deeply. And yet.

I sometimes stop and wonder, in all of my doing and responsibilities, am I showing my family the best, purest love? Not just bedtime kisses or saying the words. Or even doing things for them. I mean, every day, rubber meeting the road, showing more love than self-importance. I mean the stuff that feels most expensive.

When it’s dinnertime and they’re asking me what feels like a hundred things, or I feel like I’ve been wronged in some way, or put upon, I can feel myself getting frustrated. When I speak, I can sometimes can hear the bitter in my voice. There’s not nearly enough love there, I think, and I know that in the love department, I could do better. A lot better, a hundred times a day.

There’s a sign in the bathroom of our pediatricians office that reads “Always be kinder than you feel”. It’s like a light bulb and a punch in the gut at the same time, and I feel it afresh ever time I think of it. I have so much room for improvement.

I say that I love my family, but am I willing to pay the price of showing love, by being more patient than I feel?

Even when it seems to costs me so much, am I being as loving as possible?Am I willing to love my family by letting things go? To love instead of keeping track of all that I’m doing, of all the ways that I’m serving and caring and loving?

Maybe the hardest part sometimes is all the measuring and the counting that I’m doing.

Maybe if I stopped worrying about how much it was costing me to love every time, I’d love more easily.

Maybe if I stopped thinking it was so expensive, I could give it away more freely. Maybe I’m doling out love like a greedy little miser and I should start I giving it away like a generous, rich fool?

If we could tap into a deeper love, a love that isn’t restricted, one that is limitless, and is detached from the outcome, from the reciprocation, we would have more of it.

The truest love does what it does with less attachment to the weight of it all.

See, love doesn’t actually wait, withhold, measure, or count. Love just gives. Even when it’s tested, even when it’s unreciprocated, either directly or immediately, or maybe even at all sometimes. The nature of love is to give.

It’s also one of those things that, when you give it away, it actually grows. There’s never too much, never “enough”. So why not share what I have.

If I feel like I need more love, others probably do too. If someone else needs it, I want more of it, and it grows when I give it, why not give away more?

Remember that sometimes the greatest things that we seek are already ours. The love that you feel you need you can start giving away immediately. I can’t ever help what I love I get from others, but I sure can help what love I give. No matter what, you get to choose your output.

So instead of becoming bitter, defensive, or withdrawn, when I don’t get the feedback or input I am looking for, I could choose to GIVE what I seek, I can actually set me up for greater love. The self defense-mechanism would be to match what I was given, but that can keep us all very short-changed.

Choose to be loving, and kind, and even more unattached to an outcome. Choose to be what you seek, to put the best that you can out into the world. Scatter that love like pennies and dimes instead counting it so costly, and keeping it to yourself. It will never be enough if you keep it. It’s more than enough when you give it away unattached.

I’ll be over here working on the same. Trying to put even a little more love into the world, into my home- to fill it up with love. It reaps exponential benefits, even when it’s hard. Maybe even especially when it’s hard. (Remind me if (when) I complain.)

Istead of counting the ways you see love isn’t adding up, focus on the GREAT that you can create with LOVE. It really does all starts with you. Use your superpowers. As much as it feels like it costs and as much as it feels like effort, is it absolutely worth it.

More love, like pennies from the sky, will come as you give it away. I pretty much promise. At the very least it will grow in you. Because love is transformative. Because love is powerful. Love can not only can transform the recipients, it most of all transforms the giver.

I told you it starts with you.

Xoxox