35: What is love and is it mutually exclusive to obsession?
Love is not a noun it’s a verb! Love is the act of acceptance. When you accept someone as a whole, as opposed to parts, you are loving them. Acceptance, as it applies to accepting people, is dynamic since the person being accepted is dynamic. Now let’s break down acceptance into two flavors. The first is accepting them as a person and the second is accepting them in our lives. If my past conversations with people were any indication, I would say that not many people will agree with my definition of love! Anyway, love is accepting the person. Here is an example, many of us have relatives that we do love, that we accept for their good and bad, BUT we can’t seem to get the bang for our buck in terms of time vs. positivity. In other words, we have more positive things to spend our time on then interacting with that person. That doesn’t mean we don’t love them.
I always hear people say, “I love you but I’m not in love with you.” I absolutely disagree with that statement. I don’t believe there is a difference between “love” and “in love”. By factoring it out like that you weaken its definition and create obstacles for your own ability to love. More correctly is this, “I love you but I no longer have the time to dedicate to you (for whatever reasons)”. To me, you love your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your teacher, your dog, your friends, and your partner. The difference is that you commit more time and energy to the latter and are sexually attracted/intimate with your partner. By making “in love” a factor of love, you require sexual attraction and confuse the word.
Love is not judgmental and everyone deserves it. The truth is that we are all equal, without one deserving our love more than another. Unfortunately, most people in relationships want to be loved by their partner the most. That’s an obstacle to our ultimate state. Better is to require a mutual agreement on the bounds of time, action, and energy, not love.
Now for the second part of the question, by my definition of love I would say that it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive to obsession - but obsession IS mutually exclusive to love of self. I say it doesn’t have to be relative to the person your obsessing over, because if you accept them 100%, you could think about them all the time without acting in a way that makes them unhappy. If a person doesn’t like how you are treating them, then you are not loving them completely, since you should accept them and respect their wishes. The other part to this is, obsession is unhealthy. Obsession is defined by dictionary.com as the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc. If you love yourself, you won’t allow yourself to obsess over anything. Use meditation and diversion to counter obsession.
You must love yourself to properly love others. Under my definition of love equaling the act of acceptance, this should be apparent. If you can’t accept yourself it must be difficult to accept others (completely). If you find yourself accepting others more than yourself then use your acceptance of others as a learning tool to help you to be more accepting yourself.
Acceptance is another word for satisfaction. The key is to encompass both acceptance and lack of acceptance within your definition of love and satisfaction and dissatisfaction within your definition of life. Out of acceptance of my true nature I won’t accept the things that need change. I love you today and hope tomorrow you change.
I always hear people say, “I love you but I’m not in love with you.” I absolutely disagree with that statement. I don’t believe there is a difference between “love” and “in love”. By factoring it out like that you weaken its definition and create obstacles for your own ability to love. More correctly is this, “I love you but I no longer have the time to dedicate to you (for whatever reasons)”. To me, you love your mom, your dad, your brother, your sister, your teacher, your dog, your friends, and your partner. The difference is that you commit more time and energy to the latter and are sexually attracted/intimate with your partner. By making “in love” a factor of love, you require sexual attraction and confuse the word.
Love is not judgmental and everyone deserves it. The truth is that we are all equal, without one deserving our love more than another. Unfortunately, most people in relationships want to be loved by their partner the most. That’s an obstacle to our ultimate state. Better is to require a mutual agreement on the bounds of time, action, and energy, not love.
Now for the second part of the question, by my definition of love I would say that it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive to obsession - but obsession IS mutually exclusive to love of self. I say it doesn’t have to be relative to the person your obsessing over, because if you accept them 100%, you could think about them all the time without acting in a way that makes them unhappy. If a person doesn’t like how you are treating them, then you are not loving them completely, since you should accept them and respect their wishes. The other part to this is, obsession is unhealthy. Obsession is defined by dictionary.com as the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc. If you love yourself, you won’t allow yourself to obsess over anything. Use meditation and diversion to counter obsession.
You must love yourself to properly love others. Under my definition of love equaling the act of acceptance, this should be apparent. If you can’t accept yourself it must be difficult to accept others (completely). If you find yourself accepting others more than yourself then use your acceptance of others as a learning tool to help you to be more accepting yourself.
Acceptance is another word for satisfaction. The key is to encompass both acceptance and lack of acceptance within your definition of love and satisfaction and dissatisfaction within your definition of life. Out of acceptance of my true nature I won’t accept the things that need change. I love you today and hope tomorrow you change.
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