Tired of syrupy phrases and common places?
Love is so much more than a cheesy topic that everyone can express their thoughts on.
There are wisdom words out there that pack a punch and teach a valuable lesson.
Self-love is the source of all our other loves.
― Pierre Corneille
For a long time, self-love has encompassed negative traits like narcissism, selfishness, and arrogance. But in 1956, social psychologist Erich Fromm cleared the air in The Art of Loving.
From then on, self-love became synonymous with self-care, self-responsibility, self-respect, and self-knowledge. All these are now considered fundamental pillars for mental health.
By being at peace with ourselves, by taking care of our wellbeing, by honestly admitting our weaknesses and strengths, we can further cast the net of love onto others. The journey starts within us. Listening to who we are and what we need. Being respectful and true.
Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Relationships are much more than physical attraction and romantic glances. More than dates, holidays, and family gatherings. They need a healthy foundation and that is made of common goals, trust, and shared values.
Looking together in the same direction is a common vision for the near and far future. It is an expression of hope and unity. It represents two people that stand by each other under all circumstances. Being supportive, confident, and dreaming the same dream.
Keep in mind that values define us so profoundly that they cannot be changed, only slightly adjusted. Identify your values and turn them into a sieve for friendships and romantic prospects. Invest only in what is worthy of you. It will save you time and pain.
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
― Lao Tzu
Ideally, love is a two-way street and, however you look at it, you see it converted into strength.
Those who find themselves at the receiving end of love have unconditional support. Most times that is all it takes for surviving hardships. The support of our partner is an irreplaceable, priceless force moving us forward.
Those at the giving end of love find the strength within to face otherwise insurmountable obstacles.
Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.
― Robert A. Heinlein
Feeling happy for others isn’t built into our character by default. It takes practice and the practice is rewarding as that happiness becomes genuine. But this is also an opportunity to test the surprising power of love, as it makes the process more fluid and natural.
You aren’t sure about your feelings for someone? See how hard it is to be happy for them. Does it take a considerable effort or does it feel almost involuntary? There you have your answer. Your reagent — love.
You don’t love someone because they’re perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they’re not.
― Jodi Picoult
We often hear that love is blind. While it does have the property of rose-tinted glasses, what love does is it helps us focus on the important things. Love vision means bringing to the foreground what really matters to us. Forgiving (not forgetting) the little imperfections that make us human.
Not only does perfection not exist, but it is also harmful to try to achieve it. In ourselves and others. After all, the road to disappointment is paved with unrealistic goals.
When we love, we always strive to become better
than we are. When we strive to become better than
we are, everything around us becomes better too.
― Paulo Coelho
We are now circling once again around love’s transforming power and the notion that our inner self is at the core of all outer change. Because love in its purest form is not only a reagent but an alchemist too.
We love someone despite their flaws and we are aware that it goes both ways. So we try to make ourselves less flawed and thus more lovable in return. A vicious circle where the “vice” has taken the form of improvement. Love as a perpetuum mobile of everything good. Contagious positivity.
One Was a General, the Other a Poet
The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
― Ferdinand Foch
To love is to admire with the heart; to admire is to love with the mind.
― Theophile Gautier
Where Love Goes To Die Three Times
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
― Bertrand Russell
It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals.
― Anais Nin
These words of wisdom stand the test of time the same way true love does.
And now, the most suitable ending possible, straight from the International Journal of Behavioral Research & Psychology:
Love can be called a deep feeling of affection and care that involves intimacy, commitment and passion, that nourishes like air, food, water, words and touch and has a behavioral, physiological and biochemical signature.
Stay happy!
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com
