How Do You Love?

Borrowing a page from the Bible.

Seen & Heard by Adoyo
4 min readJan 9, 2020

“This is My commandment, that you love and unselfishly seek the best for one another, just as I have loved you.

John 15:12 AMP

Unselfishly seek the best for one another. Those are the words that challenged me when I read this verse.

I had to pause and #checkmylove and I found it wanting in a number of ways.

To unselfishly seek the best for another means to do things that will benefit the other person and not harm them.

It means to be deliberate and intentional and to always check your motives and desires and choices before you make them.

The question to always ask therefore becomes

How will she/he feel or benefit from me doing/saying this?

And that requires some depth that I know I have a lot of levelling up to do to achieve.

It means to always be conscious about the people we claim to love.

And what it means is that at times we will have to sacrifice our own desires and wants for the greater good of the other person.

What a wonderful world that would be?

There’s a pastor who once nailed it on the head when he said

Selfishness is the enemy of all relationships.

And the day I heard this statement, I had to again, take a moment and check myself and boy wasn’t it the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

I scanned through my relationships and every time I have ever had issues and 90 out of 100 times, it was because I put myself first and decided that my opinions, my feelings, my wants, my desires mattered more than the other person’s.

You cannot be empathetic or even just sympathetic when you are selfish. It robs you of the ability to look at things from the other person’s perspective because it makes such a grand statue of you and that becomes all you can focus on. It literally blocks everyone else and so you do what feels right to you and then leave others to deal with the consequences of your actions.

Love is not butterflies in your tummy, that is, let’s call it attraction. Love is a verb, meaning actions. There’s a boy band from the 90s, Westlife, I think who sang a song titled ‘More than Words’. At least their version is the one I know. And part of the lyrics say,

What would you do if my heart was torn in two
More than words to show you feel
That your love for me is real
What would you say if I took those words away
Then you couldn’t make things new
Just by saying I love you

Do your actions match your words?

Do you walk your talk?

If words were to be obliterated from the face of the earth and all we had left were actions, would the people you say you love know it or would they be left wondering because your actions will invent their own language that looks nothing like love?

To love is a beautiful and big responsibility.

It is important work.

It makes us feel safe and wanted and needed and that we belong.

It is at times the wind beneath our wings that propels us to fly higher than we had ever thought possible.

To love is serious business and it needs to be taken as thus.

Pssst… there was a time I told myself that I did not want to tell someone’s son I love them because I felt like I was too full of myself and was really just focused on me. And I did stay single for a while.

And then I checked my friendships and family and I was like, “I really need to do better.” And I have been.

Progress not perfection is the key.

So I ask again, how do you love?

Are you considerate of those you love?

Do you understand that your actions have an impact on them? How does that affect the way you make your choices?

Love does not exist without sacrifices and so if you want to love and still eat your cake and have it, you need to seriously check yourself.

I honestly think if we loved unselfishly and sought the best for one another, we would have a hella lot of stronger and beautiful and kinder and happier relationships all round.

What say you?

xoxo

adoyo’s musings

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Seen & Heard by Adoyo

Storyteller exploring human connection & identity, writing to make people feel seen, understood, and enough through personal essays, profiles & themed stories.