Love : There is no love greater than love with no object
It’s funny to me that when I painted this I had no intention to write anything particular with the strings, I just randomly painted lines and it’s after the fact that I realized that the word “love” was written right there across the panel. And it’s one of my followers who made me noticed that there was also a couple right in the middle of it. To me this is the power of the subconscious mind and why art is such a great tool to uncover your own mind. Now, every time I look at this painting, I see the word love and the embracing couple. Not only that, the fact that they are two strings, also emphasizes the idea of a couple. Each with their own strings of thought put together to form the word love. I also see a parent holding a child, which is another form of love as well.
Love as a mutual agreement
I’ve come to realize that more often then none, what we think of as love between a couple is more a mutual agreement then actual Love. It’s the kind of love where we agree that “if you do that for me, then I’ll do that for you”. It has many conditions and if these conditions are broken, then “love” is reduced or removed.
Like most people, I first learned about “love” at home, observing my parents. Their relationship was not the kind of relationship you see in romantic movies. It was the kind of relationship that made you wonder why and how did they get together in the first place. I don’t think I ever really witness love or affection between them. I don’t remember ever hearing or seeing them say that they love each other. Their marriage seemed more like a chore that was forced upon them. There was always a lot of friction and arguing, especially when it came to money. Eventually, their marriage ended in a divorce. I was one of the rare kids who thought it was for the best because neither of them seemed happy in the marriage and that affected everyone in the house.
I also learned about “love” in the media. That love-at-first-sight-head-over-heels-and-lived-happily-ever-after kind of love you see in Disney movies and romantic comedies. The kind of love that’s based on looks and common interests and ignores the daily challenges of life. It was the complete opposite of what I witness at home and it was the kind of “love” I wanted to have in my life.
I ended up somewhere in the middle of the two opposite ends where there was some affection and some responsibilities. Over the years, although there was no yelling, the scaled started to tip more towards the duties and responsibility side of things, closer to what I witness at home as a kid. And despite my efforts to not end up like my parents, in hindsight I can’t help but notice a lot of similarities including the fact that my marriage also ended in a divorce.
The silver lining in this situation for me is that it made me better understand what love is and isn’t. What I thought was love was a mutual agreement. Marriage doesn’t necessarily means love, no matter how romantic it is made to look like. It tends to be a mutual contract where you promise to be and do certain things for one another, sign the contract and call it love. If there are conditions on it, it’s not love. Because love has no conditions. It’s easy, it’s free and it’s abundant. Anything else is not love. I learned that sometimes love means to let someone go because ultimately love is wanting the best for the other and for yourself no matter what that looks like. Sometimes, the best thing to do out of love is to go your own separate ways because one should not try to change the other in order to make them fit an impossible ideal. Love doesn’t try to change someone else, it accept people for who they are at the core and work with that.
For me, love enabled me to uncover the many layers we tend to put on ourselves as a protection mechanism so that we don’t get hurt, be it from previous experiences or belief, or just not knowing. In my case as I kept growing and uncovering who I really am and loving that about me, it removed certain masks I didn’t realize were there, it made me appreciate certain things more, it made me pay attention to what my fundamental needs were and it made me realize that the person I was with at the time was not happy with me and I wasn’t happy with him. It wasn’t love, it was a mutual agreement that worked so long as nothing changed. But as we changed and grew more into our real selves, we started to grow apart and both started to feel more and more unhappy so we made the difficult decision to go our separate ways. I understood that in order to stay together we would have had to force each other to be someone we were not and that’s not love, love to me is allowing people to be who they are and grow their own way at their own pace. So as contradictory as it sounds, love meant to separate and allow each other to be free to be ourselves and to find what works best or in better harmony with our true nature.
What I learned from experience thus far is that love should not be difficult. It is meant to be free and unconditional. Love should flow freely at all times and should not be removed if someone doesn’t do what you want them to do because no one belongs to someone else, despite the illusion of believing that you somehow have ownership of your spouse or significant other. I learned that love doesn’t make people feel bad, if it does, it’s not love it’s something else.
From mutual agreement to unconditional love
I also see a parent and child in the image, that’s another form of love. Although I don’t have any children, I have a dog I consider to be my fur baby and he has taught me lessons on love as well, unconditional love. I realized when I first got him that my love for him was conditional. I loved him, took care of him when he was sick, I’ve always been with him and there was an instance, after he had been vaccinated where he seems to be delusional and fearful of me. It’s like he was seeing scary things. It sounds weird but I was hurt when he wouldn’t come to me or was afraid when I was approaching him as he was under the influence of the drug that was administered to him. I was somewhat angry that I spend all this time taking care of him and “this is how he thanked me!?” , “All this effort for that?”. Fortunately, these thoughts didn’t last long but they made me realized that I was loving him under the condition that he’d love me back, the way I wanted. So I had a paradigm shift and decided that in order to love unconditionally that I would love him even if he didn’t show me affection. Love is giving. What I receive from it is the satisfaction that I’m able to give that love and not need anything in return. Any thing I get from him is bonus, but it’s not for me to decide what that looks like because it’s not my job to show him (poor dog) how to love me. Fortunately, it’s easier with a dog, two days later he was back to his normal, cuddly self and although I was very happy to have my familiar lovey-dovey dog back, I no longer felt the need for him to show me that affection, I know it’s there somewhere and I’m grateful for it and I just love him just because.
So how did that work for a dog but didn’t work for my ex? Well, it’s because I “discovered” self love. I started to listen and pay attention to the way I was feeling, I started to pay attention to my own personal needs and what makes me happy. I started to realize that my happiness is my own responsibility, not that of any one else and that in order to be happy I have to take charge of my life, I have to stop giving to others in order to receive what I feel I need from them (conditional love), instead I need to make sure I provide myself with what I need to feel whole and understand that what I give to others, I give freely with no expectation in return, I give because the act of giving itself makes me feel good but also doesn’t depletes me at the same time. By listening to myself, I realized what I needed when it comes to love (still in the process of uncovering it), I realized that I need to feel free to express myself without feeling judged or imposing on someone else, without feeling like I had to tone it down in order to accommodate others or they had to tone it down in order to accommodate me, because by doing so we both were dimming our lights to make the other feel comfortable. That’s not love. So for the love of self, we had to allow ourselves to express our feelings and wants freely. Since the situation we were in was not conducive to that, which meant loving ourselves, then we had to split so that we both could fully and freely express ourselves.
So now I’m single again, for the first time in a very very long time and having learned what I learned over the past couple years, I’m aware that I’m open to someone I don’t want to change and who doesn’t want to change me in any way shape or form either.
Now it’s your turn. What do you see in this painting? What captures your attention and why? What can you tell about what you see? What does it remind you of in your life? If you can’t think of anything in particular, then what are your thoughts and experiences on love? How does love affects your life? What have you learned about it thus far?
