Photo by Mr. Kris

Every relationship that we cultivate has it’s own dynamic.  We do not behave exactly the same with everyone, and the greatest difference that can be observed is in our “romantic” relationships.  For some reason, we treat our lovers differently than our friends, we have different expectations of them.  Perhaps, this is partly because of what we’re taught by our surroundings, from seeing others do the same.  But it is also partly because we are more doubtful with our partners, as we have more to lose.

It is because we open ourselves to them much more and are fearful of this feeling not being reciprocated.  Maybe it’s because of this fear that we hold them to a higher standard.  Maybe it is because of this fear that we demand so much more from them in order to believe that they truly care about us.  When a relationship is in this dynamic, there is no real trust and there is no real giving.

If we are insecure of our love being reciprocated, then there is no real trust in the other person.  If we are able to absolutely believe in their expression of love, then we would not have any fear of not being loved.  Without this fear, we would not be as sensitive to their actions when they do not align with our expectations.  With this belief would also come a relinquishing of our expectations, because we might realize that we can still be loved without someone following what we expect them to do.

We must also look to see if our actions are motivated by an attempt to meet expectations.  Our actions must only be those that we truly want to do, not what we think we should do and not what we want reciprocated.  If we give our time and effort in this manner, it becomes something different, true giving does not come with an expectation of receiving.  Only if we can give without any expectations of reciprocation can we free our partner from us.  Expectations can become a limitation on whoever we love, and their expectations on us.  A relationship where both people are acting in this way is a false image, because neither person is acting according to their own wants.  The more this becomes so, the more the relationship will decay, as the real people inside grow farther apart.

The unlearning we have to do in order to achieve a state of no expectations might be an arduous task, but the chance of having an honest and freeing relationship is a great enough motivator to take on the task.

Photo by Procsilas

It seems an especially difficult thing to love everyone, as some people might.  In my understanding of love, there would be no desire to change the thing that you love if you truly loved for what it was.  So if one were to love everyone, the problem I’m about to describe wouldn’t apply.  The problem is that people are so complex that it is impossible to find a person that could be deemed perfect in the eyes of anyone.  There are so many different sides to a person, that even someone we deeply respected or admired might have a side to them that would be unappealing to us.

As I see it, there are initially three possible attitudes we could adopt in our view of others.  We could choose to like everyone, dislike everyone, or be indifferent to them.  Each of these must be applied to everyone, because choosing to like or dislike only certain people would be to suggest that there is some level of perfection, or some level of inexcusable faults.  Also, if we were to choose only certain people, then everyone would choose different sets of people.  Even the person we might most despise would be liked by someone.  In this case we don’t approach any conclusive decision about the population because our own liking or disliking would be meaningless.

The problem I see with loving everybody is that if we really were to love everybody and accept people as they are, then we would not be right in trying to change them.  This creates a conflict because everyone holds certain values to be important, if we loved everyone, we would love even the people that embodied the opposite of our values.  If we are to accept everyone, then why hold our own values to be important at all?  If we are accepting of everything and do not seek to change anyone, why speak of such values at all?  Of course this is under the assumption I have made that loving entails unconditional acceptance.  This may not be true for others’ view of love.

So I decide to choose between like, dislike, and indifference.  This also became quite perplexing as I would waver between the three of these over the course of the last couple of years, depending on different experiences with people.  I still feel there must be some way to resolve this inconsistency.  I don’t think we can be indifferent completely because nobody is born indifferent.  People are driven to indifference through negative experience, and just the fact that this experience affects us defeats the purpose of indifference.  We are left with dislike and like.  Every person I know has sides that I like and sides that I dislike, so it’s hard to write anyone off to completely dislike or choose anyone to completely like.  My solution has become to like or dislike based on the sides within each person.  This way, there is someone to like in everyone, and someone to dislike.  This view also leaves room for change.  I can still hold my values and desire change based on those values in the sides that I dislike.  Right now, this is the best balance I can strike between complete liking, which I feel excuses too much, or complete dislike, which is too harsh.

This view is very much something I thought of recently, so I would be very interested to hear your own solutions or opinions so I can improve this idea or see the faults in it.

Photo by Antaean

Something that’s been on my mind a lot in the past couple of months is about the relationships that we are born with and have some sort of obligation to keep. The best example of this would be immediate family. Why do people have the idea that parents must love their children, and love them equally and unconditionally. Children in turn must love them back in the same way. Now this sort of relationship may actually exist with most families, but a lot of the time, the phrase “I love him/her” is accompanied by “she/he is my mom/dad/brother/sister.” Now the second part of the phrase makes me wonder whether this love is unconditional only because the person feels obligated to love them because of the blood relation.

I saw one of my grand-uncles this year for the first time in two years. He told me during our conversation that he loves me because we’re related. This was confusing to me because he barely knows me, I have numerous acquaintances that know me better than he does, and yet he claims that he loves me. He said it was because we’re family. So does he love me only because we’re family? He isn’t under as much pressure to love me since he is a distant relative and still he made this claim.

This seems like a question that is very hard to approach since most people will immediately say that their love is not something that exists out of obligation, especially when it comes to family members. But we do so many things out of obligations to our friends and have no problem admitting it, surely there are some similar instances in family relationships as well?

A lot of people seem to have trouble letting go of family members even in destructive situations because they feel bound by this obligation. The ability to examine all of our connections with other people objectively without the influence of what is expected of us would be very useful in protecting our own well-being. No person should do anything out of obligation at their own detriment. This cuts down on any sort of individual freedom that person has and it also opens the door to future regrets.

In life, it seems that there are very few other things that could compare to the importance of “love.”   I put this in quotes because I feel like most people who use this word haven’t really thought of what it really means to them.  The idea they have is based on what they were told as children, what they saw in movies and TV, what they read in books.  Maybe it’s just me, but I believe that we should all have our own understanding of the things we consider important and not be content with what has already been put in our heads.

The word “love” is almost dangerous to use now because of the numerous connotations that it has attached to it.  This creates misunderstandings and hurt feelings, as demonstrated by enough relationships around us.  The first question we have to ask is if there is such a thing as an objective “love” out there that should be the ideal.  This of course is something you have to think out and decide for yourself.

Even before we start to create our own beliefs, if we examine what people call “love”, it is full of contradictions.  We say love is selfless but we practice selfishness with our loved ones.  We say love is forgiving but we harbor grudges.  My favorite is “if you love someone, set them free,” but everyone wants to hold on and get angry when it’s taken away.  Even the thing that most people think “love” is seems completely contradictory.  It seems sad that we aren’t able to live up to our own expectations of what it is.

I’m not saying I have the answer about what it is or should be.  I only think that it’s time to start questioning ourselves and our belief about what it is.  If we are going to have this thing in the top priorities of our lives, it should at least be worth some reflection.  Believe in something because you thought it, not because you were told it.