True love is not to be found at a certain place, at a certain age, or with a certain person. True love is something that is under our control on the giving end, while at the receiving end we must risk everything for the chance of true love.
True love is not the same as feeling in love. Feelings come and go Sleepiness in the morning gives way to hunger in the afternoon. Both feelings disappear with the administration of a coffee and some food. Feeling in love comes and goes as we get what we want (or are deprived of it). It is important for it serves to connect us to another person long enough for us to explore our relationship further. Feeling in love can vanish as quickly as a thief in the night.
True love can only occur with true acceptance. Acceptance involves an intimate knowledge of another. How can we truly love that which we don't truly know? Without intimate knowledge, we will only have our idea of the other. It will be our idea that we accept. It will be our idea that we love and treasure. When we discover the other's core values, beliefs, desires, and history, we may be appalled and demand that the other conform to our idea of how he or she should be. We find that we have an apple and not an orange. But, we cannot make an apple into an orange.
Discovering that we never really knew someone, we discover that we never really loved that person either. There is still a chance for love, but it will require patience, time, and a getting to know someone for the first time--even if you have been together for 20 years. Once you know what before you did not, you cannot return to your previous illusion.
In order to love truly, we must accept another person, but what does that mean? Does that mean we must like everything that he or she does? If that were the case, true love would be impossible even for God. Who is perfect, without blemish, honorable in every way, never having done any wrong or thinking any bad thought? Most of us have fallen far short of even mediocre expectations.
Acceptance means that we know both good and bad about the other and have decided that we will take the good part of that person as well as the bad. It means that we have decided that what we like far outweighs what we don't like. It also means that we will not in any way--in our thoughts, speech, or actions--try to change that part of the other that we don't like.
When we try to change something about another or withhold our love from another because of some characteristic they have, we deem them unacceptable. Most of the time, they will get the message and it will pain them even as it pains us. Most of the things which are unacceptable to us about another are also unacceptable to the other, though through weakness or circumstance they have little power to change it.
How can I love you knowing that you have done such and such? How can I love you as long as you are doing such and such? Well, in point of fact you cannot love until you give up thinking, hoping, wishing, demanding, pleading, or pressuring the other to change that thing in order to become more acceptable to you and thus become more easy to love.
Of course, there are things that we will not be able to ignore, tolerate, or let go of. These are the things that will prevent us from truly loving the other. They must either be changed or we must be willing to live with a partial love, just as we can eat around the bruise on a banana. We will wish we didn't know or couldn't see that blemish in the other. I avoid saying "partner,| because the other may be your parent, your child, or your friend, as well as your lover.
Now you can see that for someone to truly love you, they must truly know you. And that means helping them to truly see you. The more you withhold the less of you they will know and the more they will love their idea of you rather than what you consider to be you. On the other hand, the more you share of yourself, the greater the chance that something about you will be unacceptable to them. If it is something that you can change, then there is hope. If it is something they can truly let go of, then there is hope. But, if they cannot let go of it in their mind, then it will dilute their love for you. They will be like the child who knows there is no monster under the bed but who is afraid to look--secure only as long as they can avoid thinking about the monster.
How many people in this world have true love? Is it really possible for a human to know everything about another? If they could, how could they possibly accept those things? Perhaps the way out of this dilemma is to share enough of ourselves that we are content the other person knows the essential us. Although we have done many things in the past, we have changed. Maybe some of those things that we did years ago are no longer a reflection of who we truly are now. When we forgive ourselves, those things need to be dropped in a mental ocean or we will become unacceptable to ourselves.
We must also not demand that the other share everything in order that we can carefully examine and scrutinize. We must be willing to forgive even without knowing, because if we knew then some things we could not forget. God forgives and forgets, but we are handicapped in not being able to forget. If the other has done something or you have done something that is in the past and no longer is a reflection of current self, then leave it in the past.
True love, then, takes time, sharing (of our essential selves), withholding of that which is negative and irrelevant, and acceptance. We must share at the risk of being rejected and we must get to know the other at the risk of losing our illusions.
Most importantly
, true love is not at the whim of fate. It rests in the decisions that we make. Some people will never have it because of their decision to withhold their essential self or because of their demand that the other be something they are not. We must risk looking at the monster under the bed and make peace with it.
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