Last week, Kevin and I (Nikki) celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary! We decided to take a whole week to celebrate. We watched our wedding video, I tried on my dress again (it’s become a yearly tradition), and we reflected on our marriage together and our love for one another.
Love is such a complex emotion, don’t you think? In fact, it is much more than an emotion! It’s a phenomenon. Have you ever stopped to consider what this phenomenon actually is? We did, and here is what we came up with.
We think love is…
- A unique fusion of multiple concepts and feelings, including:
- Connection – sharing a mutual bond with another;
- Empathy – truly understanding what another is feeling;
- Compassion – desiring to alleviate the suffering of another;
- Respect – deep admiration for another’s true worth;
- Understanding – pure appreciation for the perspective of another;
- Gratitude – feeling honoured by another’s doing or being;
- Joy – feeling pure happiness and utter bliss.
- A force; it can pierce through emotions such as jealousy, egotism, deceit, and anger in others and ourselves.
- Something that transcends space and time; past love can influence present action.
- Something that never runs out, and only continues to grow and expand the more you give it;
- Something that drives our individual evolution; our life’s path is often a product of that which we are drawn to, that which ‘feels right’.
- Something that breeds authenticity. When we ‘speak from the heart’, we inspire others to hear us, understand us, and get on board with us. When we are being authentic, everything seems to ‘work-out’ for the best and simply ‘fall into place’.
- Something that heals emotional wounds. It allows us to move on from difficult experiences.
In a sense, love is the answer to all of our problems. It can literally transform our lives and the world as a whole. Think about it, if each of us made it a daily priority to actively connect, feel empathy, show compassion, attempt to respect and understand, be grateful, and feel joy, for ourselves and those around us, the world would be a very different place. WAY more centred for starters! We would all trust our gut and do what feels right more often, we’d swiftly overcome unpleasant emotional experiences, and we’d even avoid miscommunication and upset in the first place.
So this week, we encourage you to activate your love muscle as much as you can. Don’t fret if it doesn’t come so naturally to you, remember that like a muscle that can be strengthened, the more we actively induce love, the more it naturally exudes from us (that’s backed by research).
