Love

I was reading 'The Ethical Slut', and one bit jumped out at me.  It said 'Many people believe, explicitly or implicitly, that our capacities for romantic love, intimacy, and connection is finite, that there is never enough to go around, and that if you give some to one person, you must be taking away some from another.'  According to the authors, this leads to people becoming 'very possessive about people, things, and ideas that matter to them. They see the whole world in a limited light, so that anything they get comes from a small pool of not-enough and thus must be taken from someone else...'


I know in my household growing up, this mindset was something my parents wanted me to avoid having.  Both of my parents worked, and they were very devoted parents to myself and my brother.  Family was, and is, extremely important to me.  Holidays, weekends and evenings were spent with people, and I was taught that anything you have, including love, is useless if you fail to share it.

Both of my parents have always been involved in a lot of volunteer work where the focus is on imparting their skills on others.  As a result of this, I have become involved in similar things to what my parents do, and volunteer for things in my own right.  I tend to spend about 15 hours a week volunteering my time; I say this not to boast, but instead to illustrate how important this is to me.  I don't begrudge any time I spend volunteering (well, I try very hard not to, but there are sometimes people who test my patience!).  I have always been taught that volunteering is a way to make myself better, and to give back - the love that I share with people isn't something that's going to run out because I do it too much.

My first boyfriend's parents did not have a good relationship.  They used to fight all the time, and one day while I was sitting with the mother, she burst into tears and said 'I only have so much love to go around, and I love my kids to death, my business is my baby, I love my husband, and that means I don't have enough love left for me.  If I don't love me, who will?'  This has stuck in my mind for nearly 10 years.  At the time, I just felt uncomfortable and sad, and I remember that being the moment where I first started seriously thinking that kids might not be such a good idea for me.  Sure, it took a long time after that to really feel confident in the fact that if I don't have kids, I'm less of a woman, but it was at that moment that the idea seemed realistic.

I always understood, maybe inherently or from the way I was brought up - maybe both - that until you love yourself, you can't love someone else.  Love, in my mind, is sort of like a plant.  If you nurture it and feed it and water it and look after it, it will grow and multiply for you.  If you neglect it, it will get smaller and smaller, and eventually, you'll end up like the crazy cat lady on The Simpsons.

I don't think there's ever a question of not having enough love.  You can always love more. There is no 100% of love, with 10% allocated here, and 20% here.  Love it something you can aways give more of, and you can always find more to give.  Love isn't something you should ration.

In saying that, love isn't something you can give if you're not prepared to get hurt.  Sometimes, from the greatest risks, come the greatest rewards.  Yes, you do risk rejection and heartache and pain, but it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

T S Eliot said 'Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.'  Live like this. Live with no regrets.  Love totally and without reservation, always.