No matter what month it is, the topic of ‘Love’ is always pretty relevant, because let’s be honest, love is awesome to experience when it enters your life. Notice I used the term, ‘enters’, instead of saying something like, ‘when you find it’, or, ‘when you no longer have to look for it’. I think love is a great thing to have in your life, but I do not believe you should put pressure on yourself to find it. Especially if you are using love as a way to calculate your worth. We do not need others to feel loved, and the message I hope you take away from this post is not that you should stop wanting it for yourself, but that you should only ever search for love within YOURSELF.
“Life is about discovering who we are, falling in love with that person, and stumbling into love, not when WE find it, but when it finds US! ”
We live in a world where love can be found wherever we look; in movies, marketing campaigns, romance novels, our favorite TV shows, you name it! It has been ingrained in our minds that love can, and will change our lives. And yes! It may do those things, but love is marketed in a way that makes you feel less than if you do not have it in your life. This is a problem. Because of this whole idea of, ‘we must be with someone to be somebody’, we are instilling the wrong message within people, and ultimately, causing them to feel unworthy if they do not, in fact, have someone to call their own.
I can only speak from my own experiences, but looking back on how I viewed love growing up, it is very clear to me why lack of love or loss of love was powerful enough to send me into a deep depression, or fill me with feelings of extreme loneliness. When I was younger, it was always more about ‘one day finding that soul mate, and living happily ever after’ vs. being taught the proper skills to love myself, and understanding that I have always been whole on my own. Being told that there is someone for everyone, and that love is what basically makes the world go round, it is no wonder that so many of us have had this whole love thing wrong from the beginning. I know I am not alone when I say that we should be teaching young minds that love has, and always will begin within ourselves. By putting out this message into the world, I strongly believe that we will have far less people who suffer and far more people who are able to value themselves, even when alone.
I feel that it is important to point out the differences between feeling lonely and being alone. When we are feeling lonely, it is due to a lack of love within ourselves that causes us to feel this way. When we are able to be alone, it is because we have found it within ourselves to be content in our own company. The toxic relationships I have experienced have taught me many lessons in this life of mine, but the most eye-opening? Even in the presence of someone that claims to ‘love’ us, we can still experience loneliness. That feeling has less to do with someone else, and so much more to do with the fact that we are neglecting the task of loving what it is we bring to the table. Being alone is not an easy task, especially when we have been conditioned to think that if we are alone, there must be something wrong with us. This is what leads to people settling for toxic relationships because they fear they won’t find anyone else. Loneliness has a way of convincing us that we need to find someone to make life feel less painful, but even when you do find yourself in a relationship, the job of loving who you are is not over. If we find ourselves searching for someone because we think that will make everything better, it is then that we must be willing to search within ourselves for what it is we are feeling the need to run from. By being alone, we are making the important statement of, “I do not need someone else to complete me, for I am whole on my own. Everything else is just an addition to what I already love about myself.”
Love is awesome like I said in the beginning, but we should not allow it to dictate our happiness, or make us feel less worthy when we go through seasons of being single, and having to do life on our own. It is important to get to know ourselves and be able to live with who we are, and who we are not. When you make it a goal to continue finding more love within yourself, you will demand much more respect from those you LET into your life. Never forget that you also have a say in who gets a seat at your table.
Remember, life has never been about finding someone else; life is about discovering who we are, falling in love with that person, and stumbling into love, not when WE find it, but when it finds US!
Thank you for reading. I appreciate you!
Megan Lawrence