Love is a Decision

Love is an abused topic, we are inundated daily by messages about love. The question of what is love is usually answered by what it is not, or passed off as a feeling that comes and goes like sunny weather in Vancouver. My experience has led me to the belief that love is a decision. A decision, whether conscious or subconscious, somewhere in us a decision is made to devote ourselves to another person. If we are lucky that person (object of devotion), will make the decision to love us back. When they don't it gets really messy, but that's a whole other discussion.

In that decision we strip away all of our protections and make ourselves completely vulnerable, at the same time we raise up walls around the ones we love and commit to protect them "against all enemies foreign and domestic" to quote the US Marines. Odd quote but it fits, we fight not only the obvious outside forces, but behind our love built walls we are own worst enemies and it is a constant battle not to hurt each other. No one on earth can hurt you more than the one you love.

The decision of love is not a destination, its a commitment to a process or choice to travel a path. Protections don't fall off and new walls aren't instantaneously erected these are things we constantly work towards. Walls around old cities like Rome and Jerusalem were constantly under repair even when the cities were not under attack, maintenance of the walls was constant. The same goes for people in love. The protections from each other also have to be maintained they are like weeds that need to be constantly cut away. The decision in love must be constantly renewed in the same way the work of love constantly applies pressure.

Back to the idea of domestic enemies in love, "No one on earth can hurt you more than the one you love." The reason love must be a decision, is because the domestic battle has nothing to do with your partner, its completely internal. You have to decide not to hurt that person and live in trust that as you stand defenseless they will decide not to hurt you. That is not natural, defend and attack are natural/reflexive reactions, to truly devote and trust you have to decide to do that. I think too often we attack the ones we love about the things they do that hurt us not realizing we are just escalating the domestic battle.

This idea really hit home last Saturday when Ahmeda and I started at each other about things around the house. We have moved into our new-old house and things are not the way we hoped they would be and we discovered it might be a really long time before things get better. Ahmeda was quite expressive of her displeasure and I responded by getting very defensive about the situation, by mid morning we weren't talking to each other at all storming around the house like caged beasts. In a moment of divine clarity it occurred to us that the situation was external, both of us were not happy with the situation and that displeasure and defense had to remain external. We were together in a tough situation and we need to tackle it together and really have to consciously work not bring outside problems between us.

As I write this I am realizing love is two decisions, to devote and to trust. Love is a decision to bend over backwards for someone and trust that they will be their to catch you.

I think this is going to have to be a to be continued post, like everything in live its a process.

Speaking of bending over backwards (I just like this video, apparently it was aired on the style network again last week):


For those of you reading on Facebook I attach videos to every post but you can only see them on blogger.