Wanting love is inborn; giving love must be learned and practiced daily.

Self-interest, hunger, sex, and desire are not love.

Yet beyond personal desire, all of us know that we need love.

We want love but we are not born with the knowledge of how to get love.

Love is taught.

Since love is taught it is fraught with the immense problem of who is doing the teaching.

Was your teacher strict?

Tough?

Generous?

Confused?

Distracted?

A narcissist?

A sociopath?

A psychopath?

Your first teacher was most likely your parent or a relative.

However, their experience and their syllabus were determined by who taught them.

It is a miracle of life that we have gotten as far as we have as a species.

The bulk of love is passed on and learned at a very basic vanilla level of flavor.

It doesn’t ask much, it doesn’t give much, it doesn’t comfort, it doesn’t annoy.

It exists this vanilla love as a loose binding.

But even the most basic of love has to be practiced.

If love is not practiced in our daily lives, it loses its flavor.

It loses its purpose.

Without practice, love turns into indifference.

It blooms into paranoia.

It descends into fear.

Practice love by first loving yourself.

Forgiving yourself so you can forgive.

True love, love that is higher than self-interest, the kind of love that wears down mountains, crosses oceans, opens the clenched fist of hate, is in all of us to exercise.

We have to stop hating ourselves.

And care for each other.

Peace

Toby, aka Daniel J Frey