“At its core, I think love is help. Everybody is having a hard time. So love is really devotion to their struggle. It’s when you’re committed to helping somebody with their life. Helping them to suffer less. Helping them to manage their minds and their emotions. I think love is a deep desire for our loved one’s growth and their blossoming and their all-around wellbeing. When you love somebody, you want them to feel good, and you want to see them succeed in life. Love really demands an in-depth understanding of their hopes, and their dreams and their fears, their needs and trauma. I think love is giving and sharing our gifts for the purpose of nurturing them and empowering them and helping them to create their greatest joys.” ~Will Smith
I have talked about in a previous post [You Can’t Give What You Don’t Have] about two parts to love, the emotional feeling part versus the love reflected in behavior or action. When we care for very young children the two parts, the action and the feeling are inseparable. This is discussed in the blog post previous to this one, “Feelings versus Actions of Unconditional Love”. We love this baby and our actions show it immediately. When we love a teenager or an adult, social rules dictate how, when and even if you can display it. Mothers can’t just clean their teenage son’s face with their saliva when they missed a spot. That doesn’t feel loving to the teenage son, especially if it’s on or near school grounds. I feel deep care and respect for the men who share their personal stories. It would be inappropriate for me to walk up to one of them and give them a hug. In this way we learn to separate the emotion of love and the action of love, letting social rules and context determine our course of action. Though they are separate, what drives action is the emotion. Here I want to explore the point where emotion and action of love meet.
Transactional love, when I feel “I love you because you make my life easier in these ways” is conditional love. Because it’s conditional love, does it mean it’s not love? Does your motivation matter? In conditional love, I still want the other person to feel happy, feel good and be in joy. And, if I’m being honest, I don’t want that for the other person always. In conditional love, if you meet my conditions, then I want whatever makes you happy for you. What about when you don’t meet my conditions? What if you weren’t supportive, or you let me down? Suddenly, the love I felt for you, me wanting what’s in your best interest, is gone.
Is that still love? I know many people would say it’s not “real love”. But the feeling for what I want for the other person is real. What are those feelings if not love? Instead of it being labelled as “not real love” I wonder if conditional love is better labelled as immature love, undeveloped love or a shallow kind of love? Could conditional love eventually transform into unconditional love?
I love you because I choose to love you.
Yes, you may disappointment me, hurt me, fail me, misunderstand me. I will choose to love you still.
What about non-transactional love? What is unconditional love? “I love you, no ifs, ands or buts about it.” I love you because I choose to love you. Yes, you may disappointment me, hurt me, fail me, misunderstand me. I will choose to love you still. If our loving someone unconditionally is a choice, how does one make that choice? That choice is made on how we’re treated, isn’t it? In my experience, not always. No matter how a person treats me, if I made the choice to love them at some point in time, I continue to have good wishes for them in my heart. My authentic heart feelings don’t seem to change. What changes are my actions; those darn social rules and context. I have loved people who harmed me. I still want what’s best for them in my heart. And - my actions are to limit my involvement with them or push them out of my life completely. They may not receive my actions as loving, they may even interpret my actions to mean I don’t love them, but the truth is, I do love them emotionally, but I can’t have them in my life, because I have to love myself too. I have to want and pursue what’s best for me too. Love is not sacrificial in nature. Yes, love can demand I try harder, do better, but not sacrifice my needs continually to the detriment of my well-being so someone else can have what they want. And I wouldn’t want someone I love to keep me in their life, if our relationship was harmful to them.
I guess I used to believe love was transactional. I will love you, if you will love me. To an underdeveloped or stunted mind, like mine was, that made the most sense. I wouldn’t say that understanding of love “wasn’t love”. I would say it was an incomplete understanding of it. Maybe unconditional love can start with conditional love. Regardless, a more complete understanding also includes awareness that a more mature or developed love is the opportunity to feel the emotion of love and the satisfaction of service in alignment with that love. I love you means:
I want to help you.
I am committed to supporting you and your growth.
I am here for you in whatever way I can serve.
My gifts and talents are at your disposal.
I will give you my time.
I will give you care.
I will nurture you.
I will understand what’s important to you.
I will see, hear, know you. I will witness you as you are.
I will validate your reality.
I love you because I want to love you. I love you for the pleasure of loving you. The pleasure I receive is in the service I can be for you. I don’t think love is altruistic, but can look that way. Why do I listen to you process something for an hour? I like to listen and understand, I derive pleasure from the service of listening for an hour. I love you and this is a way in which I can serve you and support your growth. That’s the gardener.
A gardener is someone who watches over the plants and supports them in obtaining what they need to become whatever they were meant to be. The gardener doesn’t care for tulips expecting roses, and then become upset when the tulips are not blooming into roses. The gardener accepts that the tulips are tulips, that the tulips have these watering needs, and those sunlight versus shade needs, and that pH balance of the soil need. The gardener doesn’t look at the tulips and say, “well this is the water you’re getting so just deal with it!” or “well, this is the soil we have, I demand you grow!” The gardener knows and accepts, if the needs of the tulips aren’t met, then the tulips won’t flourish. It’s not personal to the gardener and it’s not manipulatable. The tulips can’t change who and what they are. The gardener doesn’t try to. The gardener knows all he can do is change the environment, not the plant itself.
“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” ~ Alexander Den Heijer
Mature love is like that. I choose to love this person. This person may hurt or disappointment me. I understand and accept. This person may cut me out of their life. This person may choose to stop loving me. I accept those possibilities. I even support them if it’s in their best interest. I hope they won’t. I hope if they have to, they’ll take my heart’s needs into consideration. I accept I can’t control any of that. All I can do is to set my expectations appropriately and choose to love responsibly.
I am a gardener of their heart.
When I’m given access to their garden, I can nurture, share and support their heart
In choosing to love someone, if I’m given the opportunity to garden, I am one of the gardeners of their heart. When I’m given access to their garden, I can nurture, share and support their heart and give what their heart needs. When access is taken away, I can only be patient. I don’t dictate the service, they do, because it’s their heart, their life. If they are adults, I can’t know what’s best for them. I’m not their parent, nor am I their god. I have to trust that if I can be of service, I’ll be given the opportunity. If I can’t be of service, they will get their needs met elsewhere. My pleasure comes from the service and opportunity to give the love. From both the action and the emotion of it. In the same way the gardener can only change the environment, not the plant itself, I know I am a part of a person’s environment. I can’t change the person in front of me, I can only participate in the formation of a supportive, nurturing and caring environment.
And when I’m cut out of someone’s life. When they say no more. Or they go away. Or I have to leave to protect myself. It hurts. But that doesn’t change the pleasure I received in the moment. After the grief is over and I’ve processed my personal regrets, I still feel my time was well spent and it was worth it. I didn’t lose anything by feeling or doing what I did in those previous moments. I think because it wasn’t conditional, it doesn’t matter what happens in the future, the outcome doesn’t matter. The point was to love in the moment. I wanted what was best for that person, in that moment. It wasn’t meant to be an investment in the future, but only an investment in the moment and the betterment of that person’s life. Hopefully a relief or release from suffering for that person. How could one regret that? So unconditional love was not a waste of my time or energy or resources. Unconditional love was the pleasure and gift of the opportunity to serve, to use my skills and talents towards the improvement of a loved one’s life.
May we each experience the receiving and giving of that kind of love in our life.
Blessings and Love,
Mariam-Saba
Reference: Will Smith. “What is Love?” YouTube https://youtu.be/9tVkWYv484Y. Accessed December 7, 2021
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