Love is an Attitude

We do not need words.

Our eyes speak our touch reveals.

Each new day we discover new beauty in silence, of each other.

– Love is an attitude

Recently, I’ve entered the horrifying and seemingly disingenuous landscape of the dating world. For years of my life, dating has been more like a broadcasted television show of ‘survivor,’ rather than an authentic and joyful experience of sharing with an individual. The majority of the time, I feel like Athena with an arrow strapped to her back prepared for battle. Staking my claim and declaring my boundaries before my self-respect and self-worth become completely taken for granted. However, I think I’ve finally met a rather charming and handsome suitor. So charming, in fact, he has taught me to put down my arrow, wave my white flag and declare peace instead of war.

Within the short time that I have met this man he – unknowingly – has become my teacher. He has taught me more about trust, compassion and unconditional love than the many books that I have read over the prolific subject matter. He has taught me that LOVE, unwittingly, is an attitude. It is bravery and courage, and although it may be seamless at times like two puzzle pieces fitting into place. It is also difficult. It awakens you and shows you parts of yourself that you’ve locked away like Blue Beard locking his darkest secrets in the basement of his home (Not to compare this new romance to the frightening folklore of Blue Beard.) However, love or a new budding romance isn’t always rainbows and butterflies- and neither is life. I think to authentically connect to someone you have to stumble upon his or her darkness; then and only then will someone truly begin to understand and appreciate his or her light. But that’s the importance of identifying and cultivating an authentic relationship. You can’t keep secrets from one another because those lies will manifest through different outlets.

Take for example, the metaphor of a hand. Our hands are extensions of our heart; through their movements people know what we are, who we are, and how we feel. I dare you to grab hold of someone’s hand. With that subtle and easy clinch, you can feel the beating of their heart- the very substance of their life. The hand just like the face can tell a story. Is it loosely gripped? Is it sweaty and nervous? Just in the non-verbal interactions we have with people we gather a sense of their story of who they are.  You can’t really hide the truth. The truth will always eventually come out, so why not have the courage and the bravery to tell it.

Hopefully, when your knight has seen your dragons he will slay the beasts of your heart and then you will make room for the truthful and joyous benefits of love. For as Rilke, once said, “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

So do not fear love, embrace it, conquer it and never forget love is an attitude.