What I Know About Love…

Well, I know when I feel it.

And, I know when I don’t.

I know that most of the time, love is not a feeling, it is an action. It is a way of showing up in the world, designed and intended to make the world, a person, a place, an institution better than it was before you loved it.

I know it is absolutely the way my friend gave of herself, her sleep, her space and her time as her sweet kitty prepared to leave the world. She turned her whole world upside down to be there for that sweet boy. I know that is love.

I know the way my mom wants to talk to me every single day is love. I know the way I want to talk to her too is also love.

I know the way I talk to the pets is love. I know the silent way they talk back is also love.

I know the way my daughter plops down on the couch, phone in hand and leans back on the couch and snuggles in is a kind of love. Love is always, absolutely, a feeling of safety.

I know my son calling me to tell me random things is love. I know the way I listen to him even though sometimes I am not sure exactly what he is talking about is love.

I know that my cat coming to sit on me as I write every day is love.

I know that that recovery program is love in action. It is the wreckage of human souls loving another soul into health and sobriety. It is a mutual destruction with a shared salvation that is love in action every time.

I know that when I watch a beautiful sunset I feel some sort of universal loving spirit envelope me. The fading light lets me know there is good in the world even as things go down.

I know when I watch an amazing sunrise over mountains, I am reminded love really does conquer all and that the sun also rises, as does love.

I know that walking a mountain trail alone engenders in me a feeling of completeness that nothing else really ever does. I know this is love.

I know that when I see my dad struggle to find the words, words that used to come so easily to a loquacious man like him, the fact that he still tries is a kind of love.

I know that when I smile at strangers passing by this is perhaps love’s smallest token but even greater gift. The brightening of someone else’s day for no reason other than we are both alive and here and living.

I know that friendship is love.

I know that all the small things I do in a day: writing, reading, meditating, hiking and working out are a form of love. I know that I have come to rely upon those things to be manifestations of the love I feel for myself.

I know that milk chocolate is love.

I know that the talks I have with the women I sponsor is love.

I know that today a woman I met under weird and trying circumstances will arrive on a plane. I know that she and I have a shared love, once upon a time for a man that wasn’t worth either of our time. But out of a mutual pain and heartbreak, we found a love for each other. It is a strange story, but it is totally, completely true. She chose to come here to California to meet me and spend her birthday with me and I know that is love also.

I know that I have been as lucky in love as I have been unlucky. I know that I have missed opportunities because I was too self involved or too full of myself to feel the love another attempted to give me. I know that I have similarly attempted to give love to someone who didn’t want it, couldn’t accept it or was too tied up in themselves to notice what I was offering was, in fact, love.

Love makes the world go round, but it is also what makes the trip worthwhile. I believe, that loving kindness has become my religion. Everyday I know I attempt to align my will and life with the loving benevolence I sometimes have a hard time linking up to. I know that love emanates from a place in my chest that bursts forward with depth and feeling. I know that love can be infinitesimal and love can be larger than the universe.

I know, for sure, without a doubt the following:

Love is an action.

Only when acted upon does it become a feeling.

And without action, love is just a hollow word that means next to nothing.

Love is showing up, even when you don’t want to.

Love is listening, even when what is being said is hard to hear.

Love is allowing yourself to be so uncomfortable while also having faith that the discomfort you feel, temporarily, is worth it over the long haul.

Love is the most worthwhile endeavor, ever. So, if you, like me, struggle with love and intimacy and vulnerability, just keep right on loving yourself through it. Laboring through your stuff, sorting through your shit, working out all the broken places, the places that are scarred and marred on your being, is THE most loving thing you can ever do…for you, or for anyone else that might cross your path in this life.

Love is why we are all still here. Life gives us another day to do our best to find new ways to show up for our lives and love better and bigger and brighter. In the end, the only thing that truly matters is how much you made the people and beings in your life feel the love you have in your soul for them. And the by product of loving, is living a true, deep and meaningful life.

Again…still.