Break........for Love!

I love you. These three words mean so much…some of the time. At other times, they can merely be hollow words with nothing evident in sight to back them up. What they often mean is “I love you as long as I get that warm fuzzy feeling inside when I’m around you or when I think of you. Just don’t ask me to demonstrate my love by asking too much of me.” But what does it mean when we equate love with internal feelings of bliss. Does it become dependent on our “loved” ones pleasing us on a consistent basis and asking very little in return.

I was recently talking to a friend that provided some interesting context for me remember about love and it made me think of how I might have lost sight of certain things. They reminded me that love is a verb AND an action. It’s easy to feel “love” when it does not make many demands on us or our time. But too often, we work harder to please relative strangers than those we say we “love.”. When we feel secure in our relationships, we tend to take them for granted and forget the importance of demonstrating our love on a day-to-day basis. Maybe because we get so comfortable that we start hoping and believing that love is a state of mind, and perhaps that will save us a lot of effort. But hoping won't make it so. Love, in the truest sense of the word, is an action verb. And if you say loving action is required, people are liable to call you names, tell you that requirements are no fun, and run off looking for the nearest place without a phone. We can say "I love you' and truly feel like we mean it, but the proof like they say is in the pudding.

And although we shouldn't put limits on love and/or put it in a box - love stacks up in terms of action, and we can ask ourselves these questions to see if we've measured well against them: How do I demonstrate my love through action?; How do my loved ones experience my love?; If I didn’t say the words, could they tell by my actions that I love them?; Do I demonstrate my love even when I don’t feel “loving?”; What actions from others do I experience as “loving?”; Do I only show love when I am “feeling” loved?; Are there people in my life who say they love me without providing any evidence of this love other than mere words?.

When we reflect on these questions, we can heighten our awareness of our own ability to put love into action- with others and with ourselves. And in the end, we DECIDE to love when we see it as an active force rather than merely a feeling. Sometimes, it's just a matter of feeding our loved ones sound emotional nutrition and express our love frequently with a good dose of love power -- energy and emotion -- behind our actions. Because as far as I know, true love exists when our actions match our words!