Love.
What is love?
It is probably the most used and abused word ever, and in the last few years of my life I have found that it is undoubtedly the most misunderstood.
Today I want to share what I have with you discovered about love, help you recognize it in others, then understand if they really love you, and in you, to understand if what you feel is really love.
Most likely what you are about to see and read is totally different from what you have always thought and experienced. At least for me it was like that.
Let's start with a video that I had seen a few years ago and put aside.
A girl's comment on my “what it means to love” page reminded me of it, and I think she can explain everything to you in about 2 minutes.
The rabbi asked a boy who was eating fish, "Boy, why are you eating that fish?"
And the boy replied: "Because I love fish!"
And he said, “Oh, you love fish.
And that's why you pulled it out of the water, you killed it and boiled it?
Don't tell me you love that fish, you love yourself and since you like the taste of it, then you took it out of the water, killed it and boiled it for your pleasure. "
So much of what we call love is love for fish.
It's like when a young couple falls in love. In fact, what does it mean if a boy is in love or a girl is in love?
It means that the boy sees in the girl something he can satisfy all his needs physical and emotional and the girl sees in the boy something that she thinks is love, but it is love of one's own needs, it is not love for the other person.
The other becomes a tool for one's personal gratification.
Too often, then, what we call love is actually love for fish.
True love is not based on what I am about to receive, but on what I am capable of giving.
People make a big mistake in thinking that they give themselves to those they love.
The answer, the real answer is: we love those to whom we give.
The point is: if I give something to you, I am giving myself to you.
And since loving oneself is a fact, everyone loves himself.
And now that that part of me is part of you, it's a part of me in you that I love.
So true love is what it gives, not what it receives.
Love: what do you feel when you try it?
Inside my school a girl left a comment asking me what I feel when I feel love.
My first answer was: "love!".
And of course she asked for clarification, she wanted to understand more.
Here is what I wrote to her:
When I love I wish that the other person is happy, I wish that he is well, I wish see her smile.
Mostly I wish who has the strength to live serenely even in difficult situations, who does not give up or break down, I wish that she is strong and independent.
When I love I take care fencing say support that person and help her to be able to feel good in any situation, without my help.
In replying to you I noticed that I use gods verbs, I have described things I do and for which I act.
Not something I "feel" (we usually experience it as a feeling we pass that "happens to us"), but something I do.
Here, love is will, to want the good, to take care of to enable those we love to be perfectly fine without us.
The best way to say I love you is to do all of this.
Also take my test on your ability to love.
It will allow you to understand if in this moment of your life you have the ability to truly love (especially who you say you love).
Start quiz Continue Complete the form below to see the results Leave your name and email to subscribe to my newsletter and receive the test results. Your name: Your email: I consent to the processing of my data in compliance with the privacy regulations. Show results
In the video, the rabbi explains a fundamental thing: we love those to whom we give.
Love is therefore to donate, to desire the happiness of the other.
Love is action.
Sure, it's also emotion, but love is something much deeper than the simple, fleeting thrill you get when you get what "tastes good" to you.
Love is not something that happens to you or that happens, but something you do. And it has nothing to do with falling in love, which is just looking for someone who meets my needs.
And from this often the suffering for a finished love arises: we can no longer obtain what we are looking for, we do not suffer so much for the lost person, but because we believe our happiness has been lost.
To write the comment I reported, I didn't think of a few special people (girlfriend, friends, parents or siblings).
I thought about what I do with my siblings or parents, with friends, what I do with my dog or my hen, with the counter operator at the post office, the gentleman I meet on the street, who writes me an email or follows my school, a cricket I see in the grass or a tomato plant.
And in any case, love is always one donate a piece of me to whom I have in front of me.
Whether he is an acquaintance, an intimate person, a stranger.
Perhaps the hardest thing to understand is this, but it is also what makes the love that almost everyone thinks they feel false.
Are you a selfish person?
Answer the 7 questions in my selfishness test.
It will allow you to understand if (and to what extent) you are a selfish person.Start quiz Continue Complete the form below to see the results Leave your name and email to subscribe to my newsletter and receive the test result. Your name: Your email: I consent to the processing of my data in compliance with the privacy regulations. Show results
If you don't love everyone, you really don't love anyone
What's your eye color?
Does it change according to the person in front of you?
And does your breathing change?
In front of some do you hold your breath until you choke?
The color of your eyes is about you, not me or whoever is in front of you.
Your breathing is about you, it is for you to live, no matter how those in front of you behave.
If you "love" only those who behave well, if you "love" only those who treat you as you deem right, if you "love" only those from whom you expect to be able to receive love in your turn, then it means that you don't love, but you expect.
You do not give, but you demand to receive.
What if you don't receive?
Stop loving.
Imagine meeting a person who is honest and fair with you, but extremely dishonest and untrue to others (and you see this unfair behavior of his).
Will you think I'm an honest person?
If a friend of mine talks badly about everyone when he's with me, why can't he talk bad about me when we're not together?
If I'm honest, I always am.
Otherwise you wouldn't question my honesty?
If I am consistent and sincere, I always am.
Otherwise, wouldn't you question my sincerity?
If you love, you always love.
Otherwise you should question your love and ask yourself, "What good is it for me to do what I do?"
We give to others to the extent that we expect to receive from them.
If they don't give what we want, we look elsewhere.
Love?
99% of the love phrases we read and dedicate do not speak about re love at all.
Observe your every relationship and answer sincerely: "If that person stopped loving you, respecting you, supporting you and being loyal and sincere, would you continue to love them?"
Do you love her, or do you love "the fish", and you just want it to satisfy your needs?
Where there is a need there is no love.
If I need you I will not be able to love you.
Because I actually need you.
A farce says: "If you like a flower you take it, if you love a flower you water it".
What will happen to the flower if you take it off the ground to pick it up?
He will die.
Like fish that is caught, killed and boiled.
If someone wanted to kill you by claiming to love you, would you believe them? 😀
And if a person who steals from everyone said to be honest, because he would never steal anything from you, would you believe them?
If I'm honest, I always am.
This is love: when you love not because others "deserve it", but when you love because you choose to love and give a little of you to others.
If you don't love everything and everyone, you don't really love simply because it means that love is not in you.
If it were, why shouldn't you give love in every situation?
I remember a sentence from Buscaglia who, in his book entitled "Love", said that we are ready to congratulate those who love their family. We find selfish people who just love themselves.
And then we ridicule those who want to love the whole world.
Well, this is the only love that exists.
Because love is free and unconditional.
A gift, remember?
What gift would it be if you get paid?
If people only loved you as long as you give them something, would you really feel loved, or loved?
The love you want to receive is free, you want those who love you to love you, without an advantage, without gaining anything, simply because it is you.
He just loves you.
If you love only those who give you something in return you are no longer giving who you are, but you are selling it.
And this is not and never will be love.
Discover the 5 Steps to Living INTENSIVELY a life Full of Emotions and Find You Well and in Balance in Every Situation (without Feeling Bad anymore) Training Your "Emotional Independence”, Even If You Don't Believe That Things Enough May they Be Different ...
... If You Don't Trust Yours Capacity or Yours Character It Doesn't Help You!
Conclusions: the love test
I have understood that there is an infallible test that helps me to understand if I am truly loving.
I love you I want the other to be happy, free and have no need for me.
I want him to be able to do without me and go everywhere, without fear.
You can afford to let those you love go away without suffering?
When you really love you want the other person to have no need for you.
If he did, he would never be happy and could never love you or others.
Always try to think in reverse: would you think that someone loves you who wants you to not be able to live without them? Who wants you need it and that you feel bad if she is not there?
Would you think it's love if she wished you were not independent and couldn't live without her help?
A person who wants you to depend on her?
Remember it: if I love, I always love.
Love is not something that happens to us, but our way of living and being.
How many people do you see who love with joy, freeing those they say they love, who do not wish to be special to the point of becoming indispensable?
Few I would say.
Just as few are those who truly love.
The jealousy, the betrayals, the couple crises, all this comes from not having understood what love really is.
Because what do you think I need to be special to you?
Just to guarantee that you, by considering me special, will give me what I need.
When I understood these things, I realized that I had never loved before.
A lifetime of relationships in which I was deluded into loving, but I had only traded my needs for those of others.
No love.
For this I was not happy (and happiness is not what we usually think!).
Then I discovered (because these are things that have always been under our eyes) what I shared with you today, I understood the true nature of love and I chose to start loving.
I understand that there are two great alternatives: Love and Fear.
And I realized that to truly love, I had to overcome fear.
We can be dominated by fear, and we will live an unhappy life, even with moments of pleasure and satisfaction that will never last long enough.
Or we can let us be guided by love and discover that we can always be happy, thus becoming stronger than any problem.
Many will turn their heads the other way, because understanding that love is what it means abandon the way we have lived our whole life until now.
Others will choose, few in my opinion, to learn to love and free themselves from fear and suffering.
I wish you would like to take the road that leads to this.
