April | 2012 | Tracks In The Dust

10 Apr 2012

The Condition of Love

At this time of the year, being spring ( in the US anyway) and also Easter, the subject of love comes up often it seems in blogs, and around my home. More often than not the discussion of love lands on the idea of what true love means. It is interesting the amount of opinions this topic will surface, especially when it seems almost all of us are striving to find it in their lives. Maybe we are wanting to embrace it because we recognise it and value it so much, or we want to work hard to define it because we are unsure that what we have is truly love.

One of my fellow bloggers recently blogged:

Greek has three words to describe love. There is Eros, meaning a love founded on craving and desire. Such is love for specific food, activities, and other things. Second is Filia, meaning love in the context of interdependence (in a family or a community), where it is highly focused on “give and take”. Examples are: I love my family, I love my boyfriend, I love my best friend. Third is Agape, meaning the total self giving kind of love, the highest form of loving, where nothing is asked of return and self-sacrifice is of prime importance. Thank you Aix for your post! http://aixwrites.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/do-you-love-me/

We all seem to be searching for the Agape-type of love in our lives, unconditional and pure. But because we are human we most always will fall short. Statements that start with “I love you…” and add the words “until” or “except when you…” or worse, the next words are “but”… or… “however” – always seem to be tied to a list of conditions. In the end it appear it’s the most “human” kind of love. Sure, erotic love like lust/desire can create a spark- it can even be interpreted as the kind of love that is give/take. In fact it seems like in today’s world Eros-type of love often gets identified as a more sincere type of love.

But how many of us can say we have experienced that Agape love in our lives? The totally unconditional love that has no ties or conditions. How do we ever attain that love in our lives? As soon as we “expect” it we have already provided a condition. When we attempt to provide it, there always seem to be boundaries to contain it. Love of and for my children and my wife comes closer than I know toward that unconditional love. Close family, relatives and dearest of friends can come close.

So as we search for the verb “to love” as unconditional one, we may fall short. In fact there is only One in the history of the world that I know of that provided the level of love that we all strive for. And for that, I am grateful. So I ask my children, as they are looking for perfection in love, as they attempt perfection with their love – do it as purely as they can. Make each day count and each condition be one that reflects the goodness of love in its purest form.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Agape, Definition of Love, God, Grace, Love, relationships, religion, Self-Awareness, spirituality, Sprituality, Unconditional Love

03 Apr 2012

7 Comments

…You Might Find You Get What You Need

With the demands that life brings, sometimes it seems we are all making demands back on it. Our needs are simple right? But somehow even in simplicity – there are so many find ways for us to complicate things. Statements like “if only I had just this one thing happen then everything would be better” or ” there are so many things going wrong- just this one time let it be right”.

On occasion we may seem to lend our hope to everyone else, we create circumstances that optimistically will create the outcomes we believe we want. And when it doesn’t work that way, we wonder “what went wrong”? The answer we are sometimes told is to “not ask for much from life, but the simple things”. We can be assured if we make demands on what we want…perhaps many of our friends or family may not accept our plans. We don’t want to appear to be labeled “selfish” to the very people we cherish most, after all. That would seem like we don’t care. But we know we do care.

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So off to the day you go… forward into the day life has dealt, with hope in one pocket and your planned expectations in another pocket. Some days it seems- things go well. Life is going just the way you planned it. Thankfully you appreciate the way the world treated you. You admire the work of fate or heaven or some guardian angel or personal wisdom you posess….. Other days everything falls short, everything you want is missing. You find yourself struggling with how fate dealt a blow, or God did not provide the answer to your prayers, or certainly someone else is to blame for the path it took.

In the end, it will only seem (in retrospect) that although your plans may contain the path you want to take- that you can count on the path turning in other directions- perhaps pointing the opposite way. In the end, you start to see the irony of it all- after all…the next second after this is truly one that hasn’t happened yet. So embrace the unknown. Know that there is something ahead and your life is already written in time, but not by you. Forge ahead with your plans- but know the path is winding. Look for what you need…

” You can’t always get what you want. You can’t always get what you want. You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need” – M. Jagger/ K. Richards

What is it you need? Happiness. Strength to carry-on. Love. Kindness. Compassion. Understanding. So many ways to get there, to get what you need…