Love is who we are.
It's not limited to one specific person or a particular set of feelings. As we are, so love is. In this, who you love is who you CHOOSE to love. Where people get caught up is by confusing how romance makes you feel with who love asks you to be and they are night and day when you compare and contrast the two.
When two people get together, romance says "Here's my better half! Let us join together and become one!" Last time I checked, two halves don't always make a whole. When two broken people get together (believing the romance of two becoming one), they unite through their wounds but cannot heal completely in them.
Why?
Because brokenness cannot be healed by brokenness. Wholeness is the cure and if you find yourself in the arms of someone who's as broken as you are, unity is not possible until each of you reclaims the perfection of who you really are apart from anyone else.
Romance also longs for the fairy tale side of love. When things start to get dull, stale, boring or "hard", romance says "This isn't my Prince Charming. She's not the princess I thought she was" and, before you know it, lines like "I love you but I'm not IN love with you" start to come out.
Huh?
That's a scapegoat way of saying "I'm really not that into you." Romance requires a blowtorch and an endless amount of wood to keep up with it and if there's no love in the mix, who's really going to invest the time to do it? No one...
Love (real love) that's unconditional takes a completely different take on relationships. Love says "I desire you but I don't require you. I see you, the real you and I love the adventure of who that is. That doesn't mean I'm always going to like you but you're worth the effort. I'm worth the effort. I'm putting on the bungee chords and I'm jumping in and so are you. This is going to be one big adventure and no matter what happens, even on the days when I don't like you, I promise to always see you, the real you."
Sounds poetic, doesn't it? Try the everyday work of really doing it and you'll find two things:
1) You have to really choose that person AND they have to choose you.
2) The choice is made daily so commitment is key.
In the long run, love will get you much farther than romance. In the short run, love never has to be devoid of romance.
How does this relate to extraordinary success?
People who choose and stay in relationships filled with unconditional love have more focus, direction and less tress (i.e. energy leaks) than those who don't. They're able to succeed farther faster because they are whole by themselves and complemented (not contradicted) by the person at their side. Do divorced people experience extraordinary success? Of course they do! But if you're divorced (like me), here's one BIG extraordinary success tip:
Choose your next partner wisely.
No comments:
Post a Comment