The Many Faces of LOVE

Oh love, sweet love. One of my favorite things in the world.

Do you know what I love most, about love? It makes people do things they felt otherwise incapable of. It pushes people to action. It moves mountains.

Love, at its purest and healthiest form, is unconditional. It doesn’t matter what other factors might change – the love is still there, steadfast.

Love, at its worst and most toxic, is possessive. It seeks control, reigning dominance over whatever lies in its path.

Both kinds of love, and every scale in between, push people to do outrageous things. It’s extremely fascinating that there is such a broad spectrum of emotion, which can be defined by the same word, and yet evoke such different associated feelings. And strong feelings at that. Love is not one of those wimpy emotions, like boredom, that you could forget about. You simply cannot help but feel when love is manifesting in your soul, whether it be a genuine, heartfelt love or a delusional, die-without-you love, love is extraordinarily strong to feel.

And when you feel love, real love, I promise you’ll know.

In most cases of love, even those with people who commit horrendous crimes, the act develops from a place of goodness, or is rationalized into goodness, because the person cared entirely so much about another. Love comes from a deep seeded connection, a bond, that overtakes and envelopes you. It’s why a father might murder someone who raped his daughter.

And yet love is unique. It can be felt, communicated, and expressed in thousands upon thousands of different ways. Millions of ways even. And its often shared in these various ways with those closest to you, each type of love creating a special embrace between the two persons.

There’s never been quite another emotion like love. It is a core part of human nature, and one of the most essential necessities for living your life’s purpose. Realizing first and foremost that in order to live fully you must function with other people becomes essential in understanding how love will open up your world and lead you to exactly where you need to be.

You learn to love yourself, your friends and family, your confidants. You learn to love ideas and movements, and to apply those passions into your world. You learn that to love others, to truly love all others, even others you don’t know, brings you peace of mind and acceptance of one major realization: you cannot control what happens to you; all you can control is how you respond to it.

When you begin to respond with love, you find your world falls into place.

But not all love you feel and respond to will be at its purest form. Sometimes, a darker love will be exactly what the universe ordered.

You might wonder what I could possibly mean by that.

Well, it’s quite simple.

You see, as human-beings, we have a nasty habit of treating each other, especially those who are different from us, with hate and ignorance and violence. We commit a lot of crimes and honestly, too many of us could care less about this disgusting truth.

Sometimes pure and good love is not enough to change the establishment. It is not enough to create real ripples of change within a community or country. Sometimes, a louder voice needs to rise up from the placated sea of happiness and strike a chord that riles up and permeates the masses.  But this rise to action, this call to the front lines, does not come from a deep seeded region of hate against those who are persecuting you and your people. It stems from a deep seeded region of love, a love for your brothers and sisters whom may be subjected to this treatment, a love to fight for justice and to settle what aught to be fairly settled, a love for what you know deserves better. You may not love the other side at all, but it is the love of your own that inspires you to take action against the persecution and the hate.

Or, on a level closer-to-home, you might find yourself strolling down a path of dark, twisted love that, apparent to any bystander, is blatantly wrong. You may not even understand it yourself, or comprehend why you put yourself through this torment over and over and over again for the sake of love, but it is a path you choose to walk anyhow. It is something you must work through and learn for yourself, for when you come out the other side of it you will find yourself forever changed, growing more into the person you were meant to be. You find yourself one step closer to understanding that dark, light, and grey sides dwell within all aspects of this world, even in love.

It it these types of love, ones so strong and so overwhelming and so unbreakable, that bring a person to commit the most inconceivable of deeds. It is these types of love that are fueled by the flip side, by the dark face of the heart.

And they should be.

Our world moves on change and growth. It is the only distance by which time is truly measured. And we, as individuals, as a culture, as society, must grow and change with it. That means changing our structure if necessary, and ridding ourselves of old, out-dated, and ignorant beliefs. It means facing challenges head on, fighting for what is righteous, deleting the wrongs from ourselves and the system, caring for the environment, and making a ruckus at times when a ruckus ought to be made.

We remember people who tapped into these strong feelings of love, those desperately seeking versions of the emotion that forced them to take extraordinary measures. Whether it was ending slavery in the United States, or protesting for civil and women’s rights, or leaking illegal government surveillance schemes to the mass public, these major sparks of change all came from a place of love.

Even if it was an angry love – it was a version of love.

This type of love is what sparks the necessary violence that must sometimes be sacrificed. For every action, there is a reaction, a consequence, and for as far up as you can go you must be able to fall as far back down. If you can grab onto the downward thrusts as much as the upward ones, redirecting and entwining love, even a dark love, into those pitfalls as you feel them, you’ll find yourself on the front lines, making a real difference in yourself, and maybe even in the world. Perhaps, you’ll even find your purpose.

But please, you must not mistake my words for encouraging murder and ignorant violence in the name of love – please no. Quite the contrary.

See, when you approach these deep, dark and desperate feelings, ones like anger or betrayal or revenge, from a place of love, rather than a place of hate, that’s when you’ll find the solution to the problem. That’s when you can finally evaluate the situation from a place of empathy (and trust me when I say the world needs more empathy). Even if the solution is to create a ruckus, the manner in which you approach causing the ruckus is the difference between acceptance and defeat. Understanding that compromise is a realistic approach to almost anything becomes the next great tool that love powers us to utilize.

Since the ultimate goal, of course, is change and growth for the betterment of our world, our loved ones, and ourselves, love helps us see that it is not always about what we do, but how we do it.

The more you come to love and appreciate all beings around you, the easier it will be to respond to any spectrum of love you might feel with mindfulness and tact. Your reaction is the only action you shall ever maintain control over, and therefore becomes the sole most important possession that you shall ever own.

Love, in all its forms, deserves a reaction, deserves the right reaction. It is the strongest of human emotions, and the most moving feeling you will probably ever harbor in your lifetime.

The darker side of love is rarely painted as so. People associate the right love with laughter and romance novels and kisses. They forget that sometimes love, the right love, pushes people to do crazy things, and worse, they won’t admit that it is sometimes necessary for love to push us to do these crazy things.

Whether to change ourselves, society, or something else, the many faces of love will help us on our journey.

That is why I absolutely love, love. It inspires people to do the most outrageous things.

And I hope that it keeps inspiring us, for as long as humanity walks this world.

Until next time –

Yours For Happy Writing,

Lady Jenji