The Importance of Love in Your Life

The most important question in life is, “What is love?” Most people answer that the most important question is; “How do you love?” Most people, however, are blind to how they actually love, especially in their daily lives. What is love?

Love isn’t a sensation. Love isn’t an emotion. Love isn’t even as simple as pure love, which is just an expression. To truly love someone, one must experience love first.

Love is effort. It’s conscious, intentional, caring striving for the loved one. It’s willful, conscious, planning and executed with love, care and compassion. Love isn’t something you accidentally drop into your heart on a random basis and hope that it grows out just like that. It takes work and action on your part. It’s an ongoing conscious effort to grow a loving relationship.

There are times when I can feel my love has been lacking in my life and actions to give love have been poor or unimportant. When this happens I immediately go back to my plan, my purpose, to figure out what I need to do next in order to grow love in my life. How do I love when nothing is happening? When I’m too tired to give love?

Often I find myself trying to grow love by giving it away. I make plans, try to set up future meetings and let others know about my intentions. I’ve even cheated on my partner to gain love. Are these actions developing love or accumulating love? Maybe I should reevaluate my intentions, my actions and my goals.

I can’t give away my love, because then it would lose its meaning. I can only gain it by giving it away. By growing love in my life, I am fulfilling my purpose and my dreams. I love my partners and life with them wholly.

Does this mean that I ignore my partner when I make plans? Absolutely not. However, I become less available to them and I don’t show the commitment to them that I once did. This kind of behavior is a sure way to fall into the bad habit of focusing on non-relation, rather than on the relationship.

Sometimes this kind of action is not intentional. Sometimes our actions have a subconscious purpose that we may not even be aware of. It might be related to how we are feeling at the time. Sometimes our response to something might change and we don’t realize that we are changing our actions or our feelings. When we act in ways that are contrary to our feelings, however, it becomes an obvious matter.

If we can take time to listen to ourselves and to the messages we keep getting from our inner passions, then we can decide what actions and feelings lead us away from love. Then we can consciously work to strengthen those feelings of love within us. We can work to make that power real within our relationships and marriages. Then love will be stronger and more real for both of us.