The season of love is quickly coming towards us with Valentine’s Day right around the corner. This time of year makes me reflect on love a bit more than usual, and I already give attention to love daily.
My parents shared love with me in very different ways and that had an impact on my being able to give and receive love as a young adult.
My MOM was unconditional with her love while I was growing up and was supportive of me when I came out as a gay man at 20 years of age. I never knew a time when my MOM was not in my corner supporting me and rallying for me as my fiercest ally and advocate.
My dad was not as loving when he found out about me being gay. As a result, we have had an estranged relationship for as long as I can remember. I make up the story that my dad was disappointed with me and punished me with his rejection and silence.
This can be confusing when we are taught to believe that our parents “should” love us.
On a trip to Spain in 1998, I found a ceramic bowl in the town of Mijas near Malaga, and the moment I found it, I had an epiphany about love.
The bowl has a center circle surrounded by rings. The circle and each ring are different colors and imperfect in the delineation between each one.
The idea that came to mind when I saw that bowl was that it was all about love. I stood still and let the thoughts come to me as I looked at this bowl for what seemed like a very long time.
I bought the bowl and it has been in my home ever since in a place where I can sit with it anytime I want.
For me, the interpretation of the circle and the rings was that the circle was self-love and the rings were the different loves we experience with people.
While my original understanding of this was not this intricate, it has grown stronger over time just like the love concepts it represents.
- Love Circle: The love we feel for ourselves, how we talk to ourselves and how we find joy in our lives in doing the things we love.
2. First Love Ring: The love we have for our family members including our “spousal” relationships and we experience loving interactions with them that become sacred memories.
3. Second Love Ring: The love we share with a best friend and the things that we love about each other and the things we love to do together in fun and love.
4. Third Love Ring: The love that exists between close friends who are there for each other through the thick and thin of life. The ones who support us in love without having to be in our lives every day.
5. Fourth Love Ring: The love we speak and share or remain silent about with people we know casually as acquaintances, The people who know us from a distance rather than up close in person.
6. Fifth Love Ring: The love that we have for people we don’t know who are strangers to us. We may or may not speak to them in passing, we just know that they just passed through our path.
7. Six Love Ring: The love that we are taught to share with those who have done us wrong and might be perceived as enemies. This love is kept deep in the recesses of our thoughts and minds to avoid further hurt.
8. Seventh Love RIng: The love that exists no matter who we are or who we meet. This love exists without our need to be present, it is the universal love that is all around us whether we chose to see it or not.
One of the miracles and beauties of this concept of love is that the bowl represents for me is that love is free-flowing, flexible, and fulfilling for any of us who chose to be in the space and experiences of love.
Self-love is non-negotiable for me and I have daily habits and practices that keep me loving myself. I do my best to stay grounded in the core love that supports me in giving and receiving while in all of the other love experiences.
It is more peaceful for me to accept that people will move from one circle to another throughout my life. That is to say that a person who was my “spouse” was in the first Love Ring and as a result of the end of that relationship might be in another Love Ring.
Another example is a close friend might move into the best friend Love Ring for some time and then move out of it again into another Love Ring. When I accept the organic nature of love, I find more peace in accepting my relationships as they are and not how I want them to be. If this sounds like letting go of control in relationships, that is exactly what it is for me.
Love doesn’t have to be complicated when we see it for what it is in its many forms, which are all around us every day.
How might you focus on creating more self-love habits?
Who is in which Love Ring in your life at the moment?
How might this idea support you with Valentine’s Day 2022?
With much gratitude…
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: Shutterstock
