Love is a much a choice as it is a feeling (it took me years to learn this one. I am grateful to have learned it, though.)

Not everything in love is about feeling good. Sometimes, it’s about not feeling good at all. Because, when we love openly and authentically, we make choices based on what is best for the other person; not what we want.

Unconditional love is just that: free from condition or requirement. To that end, it means that our love persists even when we feel let down, hurt or disappointed.

Love is given freely, as it should, but it is liable to exploitation if we let it. It is something precious to be safeguarded if it is not received with reverence.

Many people walk the earth in search of what they believe love is supposed to be, even though they already posses it in some capacity. There is love all around if you just turn around and look at it.

Furthermore, people treat love like it is the most personal thing in the world. Love is the most unifying lifeforce among us, even if we hold it at arm’s length.

Love is felt in a person’s actions. The heart has its own language, and the way we love one another is they key to communication.

The most distilled form of love is the purest form of innocence. We are born knowing its essence, but it is up to us to cultivate it as we grow.

Love is not a currency. It has no cap, allowance or spending limit. Those who withhold it are not conserving their energy; they are devitalizing it.

Love is felt in all the spaces we call home, the circles where we find ourselves, and in the journeys we embrace. It is a little bird on the fence. A rose in the garden. In the stillness of trees. Sometimes, it is in the most mundane facets of our lives that we don’t even stop to realize its force.

It is in our family stories. The food on the table. The lesson in the lecture.

It’s the wind whipping by our ears. The bravery to try something new. The earnest to be better to ourselves and to others.

It is universally unifying no matter our origin story, credence, or faith.

What I know about love is that I still have more to learn. More to give. More to see.

Most of all, I am grateful to spend a lifetime figuring it out.

I’ll let you know what I find along the way.