Do We Really Know How to Love?

We talk about love all the time, and we say “I love you” all the time too. However, do we really know what love is? Do we really know how to love?

Most of people define love as one kind of strong emotion, an intense attraction to be with someone, think about the other obsessively, and want to do everything for the other, want to be with the other, emotions so strong that we are almost out of control…these are symptoms of falling in love. It’s more like God sends someone to let us have a taste of surrender. We have to surrender to this person. We have a glimpse of how unconditional love could be. The problem with this kind of love is, this strong emotion will fade out someday.

This strong attraction draws us to a journey of learning how to love together.. As a matter of fact, most of us don’t really know how to love. We mostly mistake “need” as “love”.
When we need the other person, we are not free and we have lots of expectations and demands on them. Whenever they don’t meet our expectations or demands, we feel hurt and we feel angry.

Love is different. When we love the other person, we accept them as they are without any condition. We give them space to be who they are just like we give ourselves a space to be who we are. We accept their darkness and weakness and not just the glamour sides of them. We communicate to create a union, share life together, but at the same times, we are two separate, free individuals.

This is my definition of love. How about yours?

By Suzanne Yang